Bill Clinton isnt the only one who has had to carry Obamas bags over the past 3½ years.
With former President Clinton due to deliver tonights keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte on behalf of President Obama Ryan Lizza dropped this bombshell from the 2008 campaign in an article in the New Yorker:
Tim Russert told me that according to his sources Bill Clinton in an effort to secure an endorsement for Hillary from Ted Kennedy said to Kennedy A few years ago this guy would have been carrying our bags.
Conservatives of course know all too well that if it had been reported that those words were uttered by a Republican there would be no effort spared in ostracizing that Republican from public life. Dont forget that MSNBC personnel fell all over themselves telling us that words like anger Chicago and golf are racial code words against Obama. But since Bill Clinton was the first black President he gets their dispensation.
Yet let us put aside the racial overtones of Clintons statement (which as if this writing he has neither confirmed nor denied). The most interesting aspect of this revelation is that four years later it is Clinton who is set to carry Obamas bags. (Meanwhile Hillary was wise enough to pack her bags before the Labor Day Weekend. She is currently in China amidst six country Asia-Pacific tour thus avoiding President Obama her husband and the DNC altogether).
It should be noted here that the 42nd President isnt the first person to have carried Obamas bags nor will he be the last. Since Obama won the 2008 Iowa Caucus the liberal media has been carrying his bags usually with great enthusiasm. Early on this was an easy task because Obamas bags were light owing to his tendency to vote present. Matters of inconvenience such as Reverend Wright Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi were simply cast aside like lost baggage. Or in the case of the Khalidi videotape some baggage was put under lock and key never to see the light of day.
However over the past three and a half years the liberal media has found Obamas bags heavier to carry. They still haul them but not with the ease they did when hope and change danced off Obamas tongue causing people to faint in his presence. You would think with the country accumulating nearly $5 trillion in debt a stimulus with no spark the albatross of Obamacare and an unemployment rate that hasnt fallen below 8 would cause people to feel faint or at the very least feel faint hope in President Obama. No doubt this has played a big part in adding to the strain to the backs and shoulders of the liberal medias heavy lifting for The Anointed One. Yet for the liberal media carrying Obamas bags is preferable to the prospect of a Romney presidency.
But even some of Obamas surrogates are having trouble carrying his bags. When Maryland Governor Martin OMalley was asked by Bob Schieffer on CBS Face the Nation over the weekend if we were better off now than we were four years ago OMalley replied in the negative. OMalley has since changed his tune. But OMalley who has been touted by some as a future Democratic presidential nominee is likely to be relegated to carrying Joe Bidens bags for the next two months.
You know things are not going well when the best a surrogate like former New Mexico Governor and Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson can do is say that the international community wants Obama to be re-elected. Unfortunately for Obama UN General Assembly members like Iran and Venezuela do not have a vote in this election.
It wasnt supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be a new era of responsibility. Instead Obama has spent this new era of responsibility blaming his problems and shortcomings on the Bush Administration Japanese tsunamis and the Arab Spring thus passing his burdens onto us. In a sense all of us have been carrying President Obamas bags whether we want to or not.
There is a simple reason for this state of affairs. Barack Obama cannot handle the responsibility that comes with being President of the United States. President Obama cannot carry his own weight. Will the American people choose a President who can carry his own bags this time?