Bill Clinton: "We did not play the race card"

CNN reports that Bill Clinton told them "the notion that he went negative toward Barack Obama 'is a total myth and a mugging'", and that they didn't play the "race card". (Source: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/17/bill-clinton-we-did-not-play-race-card/).

After all, some of his best friends are black, right? Right, and here is the proof, Bill Clinton quoted as saying: "Charlie Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in unequivocal terms in South Carolina that no one in our campaign played any race card."

Bill Clinton was famously dubbed the "first black President" by author Toni Morrison. Wait a minute, she's African American, right? So why not seek cover by saying she's supporting Hillary? Oh, wait. Because she endorsed Obama.

The fact is that Bill Clinton is way too smart to be loose with his words. This is the man capable of parsing so precisely that things depend on what the meaning of "is" is. So his Jesse Jackson comments, the "fairy tale" comments, the measured and slow response to out of control surrogates (Ferraro, anyone?) are hardly accidents. Own it, Bill. You either played the race card or did not care that your actions invoked race. Either way it is below what I would expect of a man who was once my hero.

As a postscript, consider this: Hillary Clinton several days ago launched a massive "apology to black voters" campaign. However, given that she was apologizing for "belittling Obama's success" in South Carolina by linking Obama's success to Jesse Jackson's, isn't it a little strange that her apology concluded with "We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama"?