US Election 2008 Blog

Washington Post Staff Writers 

In the past eight years, Bill and Hillary Clinton earned a combined $109 million, with the former president collecting nearly half of that money as a speaker hired at times by companies that have been among his wife’s most generous political supporters.

After leaving the White House, the Clintons earned $30 million from their best-selling books and brought in as much as $15 million more through an investment partnership with one of her top presidential campaign fundraisers, California billionaire Ronald Burkle. The disclosures came with yesterday’s long-awaited release of the Clintons’ joint tax returns, a move made in the thick of Sen. Clinton’s fight with Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) for the Democratic nomination.

Sen. Clinton (N.Y.) initially resisted making her family’s finances public, but pressure on her to match Obama’s disclosure grew in February when she disclosed that she had dipped into her personal account to lend her campaign $5 million.

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But Candidates Have Taken Positions Exceeding Mainstream of a Few Years Ago

Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post

After Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly declared in March that homosexuality was immoral, gay supporters of Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York were furious when neither presidential candidate was very critical of Pace.

They let both campaigns know it, and the next day Clinton and Obama said they do not consider homosexuality immoral.

The tentative reactions suggest the caution with which the two leading Democratic contenders approach gay rights issues when they are publicly debated. “The antenna goes up,” acknowledges Ethan Geto, an informal adviser to Clinton on gay rights issues. “It’s a measure of how volatile gay rights issues are in national politics.”

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Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson is labelled by former flames as a charmer who could bring home the female vote

Sarah Baxter, Times Online

IN the battle for the women’s vote, Fred Thompson has a secret weapon against Hillary Clinton - the legions of former girlfriends who still adore him and who want him to be president.

The Hollywood actor and former Tennessee senator racked up an impressive list of conquests during his swinging bachelor days in the 1990s, but he appears to have achieved the impossible and kept their friendship and respect.

Lorrie Morgan, a country singer who dated Thompson and considered marrying him in the mid1990s, told The Sunday Times: “I couldn’t think of a bad word to say about Fred if somebody put a gun to my head.

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By David M. Halbfinger - New York Times Blog

LOS ANGELES — Steven Spielberg’s exploratory phase is over: He’s a Hillary Clinton man.

After a flirtation with Senator Barack Obama in February, and maxing out his contributions to both Mr. Obama and former Senator John Edwards, the famous filmmaker today threw his support formally behind Senator Clinton.

It’s the most significant indication yet that Hollywood luminaries are returning to what was expected to be their default position at the start of the campaign, before Mr. Obama suddenly grew white-hot.

In a statement that her campaign splashed across its home page, Mr. Spielberg cited Mrs. Clinton’s “experience and strength.”

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By George F. Will, Washington Post

Early in George W. Bush’s presidency, liberal critics said: The economy is not growing. Which was true. He inherited the debris of the 1990s’ irrational exuberances. A brief (eight months) and mild (the mildest since World War II) recession began in March 2001, before any of his policies were implemented. It ended in November 2001.

In 2002, when his tax cuts kicked in and the economy began 65 months — so far — of uninterrupted growth, critics said: But it is a “jobless recovery.” When the unemployment rate steadily declined — today it is 4.5 percent; time was, 6 percent was considered full employment — critics said: Well, all right, the economy is growing and creating jobs and wealth, but the wealth is not being distributed in accordance with the laws of God or Nature or liberalism or something.

Last Sunday, eight Democratic presidential candidates debated for two hours, saying about the economy . . . next to nothing. You must slog to Page 43 in the 51-page transcript before Barack Obama laments that “the burdens and benefits of this new global economy are not being spread evenly across the board” and promises to “institute some fairness in the system.”

Well. When in the long human story have economic burdens and benefits been “spread evenly”? Does Obama think they should be, even though talents never are? What relationship of “fairness” does he envision between the value received by individuals and the value added by them? Does he disagree — if so, on what evidence? — with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that “the influence of globalization on inequality has been moderate and almost surely less important than the effects of skill-biased technological change”?

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By Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe

THE NEXT time the Democrats debate, they should pull out a chair for Bill Clinton.

Wolf Blitzer asked all the candidates what they would do with Bill Clinton if they were elected president. His question was clearly posed to get Hillary Clinton to talk about her husband’s role in any future Clinton administration.

Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska, said he would use Clinton as a goodwill ambassador, adding, to laughter, “He can take his wife with him; she’ll still be in the Senate.”

Hillary Clinton said, “Bill Clinton, my dear husband, would be sent around the world as a roving ambassador.” There isn’t a problem we face, she added, “where we don’t need friends and allies, and he would be a tremendous help.”

At another moment, Hillary Clinton was asked whether the Clinton administration’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays and lesbians in the military was a mistake. She called it “a transition policy.” Then, when the candidates were asked what they would do if they had information about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, Clinton noted, “My husband tried to take out bin Laden.”

Her opponents also used Bill Clinton as a reference point. Senator Joe Biden of Delaware noted that he “came to your husband” to make the case for US involvement in the Balkans. When asked to give his “definition of rich,” Senator Barack Obama of Illinois referenced tax policy “back to when Clinton was in office.”

For Hillary Clinton, this could be a plus with voters who yearn for the Clinton years. But it also focuses attention on a complicated political and marital relationship — and is all about the past.

The Clintons, of all politicians, know that presidential elections are about the future. Remember the Clinton-Gore campaign song of 1992? The refrain went, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.” It wasn’t “Yesterday.”

By Laura Smith-Spark, BBC News
Manchester, New Hampshire

Want to meet the next president of the United States? Move to New Hampshire and you stand a good chance.

In a country of some 300 million people, the state’s 1.3 million residents are perhaps the most heavily-canvassed and targeted voters of any in the nation, bar Iowa.

Last week each party’s candidates flocked to New Hampshire for the latest televised debates, as they seek the all-important nomination to run for president in 2008.

And over the coming months, the contenders will court the state like no other, descending on it for house parties, 4 July parades and rallies - each time seeking vital “face time” with potential voters, in a strategy known as “retail politics”.

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