After days of accusing Barack Obama of elitism, Hillary Clinton came to Washington on Tuesday and charged President Bush with trampling the Constitution on his way to expanding presidential powers.
“This administration’s unbridled ambition to transform the executive into an imperial presidency in an attempt to strengthen the office has weakened our nation,” Clinton told a convention of newspaper editors and publishers. “It has corrupted and corroded our moral authority and brought our prestige and reputation to its lowest ebb.”
Asked for a reaction to Clinton’s attack, White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto e-mailed The Examiner a single-word reply: “yawn.”
Notably absent from Clinton’s speech was any criticism of Obama for calling small-town voters “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion.” Clinton spent the previous four days seizing on the remarks as evidence that Obama is an out-of-touch “elitist.”
One prominent Democrat told The Examiner that Clinton decided not to overplay her hand by attacking Obama for a fifth day in a row. Besides, the Democrat said, Clinton is “doing her talking” through a new TV ad that hammers Obama as being “out of touch” with the values of Pennsylvania, which holds its primary Tuesday. The ad features Pennsylvanians claiming to have been “insulted” by Obama’s comments.
“I’m not clinging to my faith out of frustration and bitterness,” one woman says into the camera. “I find that my faith is very uplifting.”
A man adds: “The good people of Pennsylvania deserve a lot better than what Barack Obama said.”
Obama fought back with an ad that shows Clinton being jeered by a crowd in Pittsburgh for bringing up the “bitter” comments Monday.
“There’s a reason people are rejecting Hillary Clinton’s attacks,” intones an announcer who bemoans “the same old Washington politics.”
This is followed by Obama saying: “When we get past the politics of division and distraction and we start actually focusing on what we have in common, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.”
Obama was forced into a two-front war over the controversy after Republican John McCain joined Clinton’s attack this week. With the presumptive GOP candidate attacking her opponent, Clinton turned her fire on the Republican in the White House.
“Rather than faithfully execute the laws, he has rewritten them through signing statements, ignored them through secret legal opinions, undermined them by elevating ideology over facts,” Clinton said.
“Rather than defending the Constitution, he has defied its principles and traditions,” she added. “He has abused his power while failing to understand its purpose.”
