Bill Clinton, on 'Charlie Rose' Show, Suggests Obama Not Ready; 'Miracle' If Hillary Won Iowa

[DeepModem Mom]

Editor&Publisher: Bill Clinton, on 'Charlie Rose' Show, Suggests Obama Not Ready -- And Would Be a 'Miracle' If Hillary Won Iowa
By Greg Mitchell
Published: December 14, 2007

NEW YORK In a surprisingly frank interview with Charlie Rose on his PBS show late Friday night, former President Bill Clinton declared that his wife was not only far better prepared to be president than her chief rival Sen. Barack Obama -- "it's not even close" -- but that voters who disagreed would be taking a "risk" if they picked the latter.

Repeatedly dismissive of Obama -- which could come back to haunt the Clinton campaign -- the former president at one point said that voters were, of course, free to pick someone with little experience, even, he said, "a television commentator" who would have just "one year less" experience in national office than Obama. He had earlier pointed out that Obama had started to run for president just one year into his first term in the U.S. Senate.

Clinton also said, surprisingly, with a laugh, "It would be a miracle if Hillary wins in Iowa, and I'm not just low-balling you." He said John Edwards might well win -- which would certainly be preferable, from the Clintons' perspective, to an Obama win.

He praised Obama's intelligence and "sensational political skills" but repeatedly suggested that, unlike his wife and some of the other candidates, he might not be ready for the job. Asked directly about that, Clinton refused to state it bluntly, but did point out that when he was elected president in 1992 at about the same age as Obama, he was the "senior governor" in the U.S. and had worked for years on international development issues. Viewers could draw their own conclusions....

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He attributed his wife's decline in Iowa to the press overplaying her poor answer to one debate question on driver's licenses for illegal aliens.

Clinton did say that he gets "tickled" watching Obama because of his attractiveness and political skills. "I like all these people," he said. "I have nothing bad to say about him or anyone else."

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