Hillary Clinton's 2008 slaps still sting President Obama [View all]

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“Friendship” was the main course during Hillary Clinton’s lunch with President Barack Obama this week, according to an Obama spokesman, but no one could have blamed Clinton for ordering a small side of I-told-you-so.
Much of the bombastic campaign rhetoric from 2008 — think “3 a.m. call” — proved as ephemeral as the thousands of half-melted “Hillary” candy bars Clinton’s staff handed out on Super Tuesday five years ago.

But some of Clinton’s most memorable ‘08 shots at Obama have had resonance far beyond the short shelf life of the standard campaign hit parade: her mockery of his vow to transform Washington in his own image, her cry of “elitism” and her skepticism about his managerial chops echo today in the form of GOP attacks and the lingering doubts of some in his own party.
(PHOTOS: The Clinton-Obama relationship)

Clinton’s campaign attacks on Obama may have been an exaggerated version of reality, but in retrospect they were illuminating, in the way a hand grenade provides a flash of light before going boom.

Former Clinton staffers didn’t want to be within a mile of this story. (“I’m hanging up now,” said one top ’08 campaign aide cheerfully before the line went dead.) But several more intrepid ex-aides pointed to one quote in particular: a Clinton broadside delivered in Toledo, Ohio, on Feb. 24, 2008, that represented her most stinging attack on Obama’s core hope-and-change message.
“I could stand up here and say: let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified,” Clinton said, voice dripping with contempt long since discarded.

“The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know that we should do the right thing, and the world would be perfect,” Clinton added. “Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this will be. You are not going to wave a magic wand…”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/barack-obama-hillary-clinton-2008-campaign-95035.html#ixzz2aiQT2GCl