Maybe someone should be checking Bubba’s meds along with those of his wife. As noted in LU’s Web Crawler last month, “the 70-year-old former president has been hit with heart problems and has admitted that his hands shake when he gets tired. He sometimes fumbles for words and has made several verbal slips that have hurt his wife’s effort.”
This time, what Bill Clinton said was obviously quite intentional. Quite bizarre, too. As the Washington Free Beacon notes, Clinton was speaking at a voter registration event Tuesday when he said:
Look man, the other guy’s base is what I grew up in. You know, I’m basically your standard redneck.
Two points worth noting. One is Clinton’s seeming presumption that he “grew out” of redneck status, which is at least open to debate. In the 2010 book “Game Change,” authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin claim that Clinton told the late Sen. Edward Kennedy during the 2008 election campaign between his wife and Barack Obama, “A few years ago, this guy [Obama] would be getting us coffee.” In addition, Clinton has retained, perhaps for show, some of his downhome mannerisms and speech habits.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The other and perhaps more critical point is whether Clinton really believes it is beneficial for him to self-identify with the supporters of his wife’s opponent, especially with the many rumors floating around about Donald Trump’s alleged sexual exploits. With the degree to which words are being twisted out of context on a daily basis during this fractious campaign, is this an association that Bubba — with his own history of accusations of sexual misconduct — wants to be fostering?
