First Hillary Clinton, then husband Bill, have repeatedly floated the balloon that Barack Obama might make a great Number Two on a presidential ticket headed by none other than Hillary Clinton. Obama’s short answer so far: Thanks but no thanks.

Hillary Clinton’s most recent forumlation came over the weekend in Mississippi, when she told voters, “I’ve had people say, ‘Well, I wish I could vote for both of you’. That might be possible some day, but first I need your vote.”

Her husband chimed in the same day, calling a Clinton-Obama ticket “an unstoppable force.” As per NBC News: Clinton said that Hillary believes that if there was a way to “unite the energy and the new people” that Barack Obama has attracted with the appeal he said his wife has shown in “small town and rural America, they’d “be hard to beat.”

Over the weekend, the blogosphere and pundits went nuts, pointing out the obvious contradiction: A big chunk of Clinton’s kitchen sink barrage of Obama consists of her contention that he’s too green and unqualified to be Commander in Chief …. uh, but he’s perfectly acceptable to become the person one heartbeat away from the job?

The New York Daily News’ Michael Goodwin (no friend of the Clintons), put it this way: “It’s a dream team all right, as in dream on. It’s a fantasy because, in the Clintons’ pitch, naturally, she is on top of the ticket and Obama is her No. 2. That’s rich of her, considering that Obama leads in both the delegate race and the popular vote. Forget those pesky voters - Hillary has declared herself the winner!”

Time’s Karen Tumulty put it succinctly: “There’s one big problem with the Clinton campaign encouraging all this talk of a dream ticket: It undercuts their argument that Obama is not prepared to be Commander-in-Chief. If they really believe that to be the case, how could they justify putting him in a position where he is one tragedy away from the job?”

You get the idea. Even as his wife’s campaign was busily tearing down Obama, comparing him to none other than special prosecutor Kenneth Starr (who’d have thought in a million years the Clintons would be the first to invoke the memory of you-know-who), Bill Clinton airily dismissed the negative back-and-forth this way: “That’s politics.”

Monday afternoon update, via the New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama implored voters here today to discount the political chatter about him joining the Democratic presidential ticket with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, declaring: “I don’t know how somebody who’s in second place can offer the vice presidency to someone who’s in first place.”
“If I’m not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?” Mr. Obama said. “Do you understand that?”

Go to the tape, courtesy of MSNBC:

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Presidential, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.