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By
EDWARD KLEIN
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Last Updated: 10:43 AM, June 2, 2013
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Posted: 11:07 PM, June 1, 2013
EXCLUSIVE
President Obama made a secret deal to support
Hillary Clinton when she runs for president in 2016, campaign sources say,
payback for the support her husband gave him in 2012.
Bill Clinton’s animosity toward Obama is
legendary. A year before the last election, he was urging Hillary to challenge
the sitting president for the nomination — a move she rejected.
According to two people who attended that
meeting in Chappaqua, Bill Clinton then went on a rant against Obama.
“I’ve heard more from Bush, asking for my
advice, than I’ve heard from Obama,” my sources quoted Clinton as saying. “I
have no relationship with the president — none whatsoever. Obama doesn’t know
how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent.
He’s an amateur!”
HUB-BUBBA: “The Amateur” says Bill Clinton’s
animosity toward the president cooled only with a promised endorsement and a
fawning January spot on “60 Minutes” with Hillary.
A deal was struck: Clinton would give the key
nominating speech at the convention, and a full-throated endorsement of Obama.
In exchange, Obama would endorse Hillary Clinton as his successor.
Clinton’s speech was as promised; columnists
pointed out the surprising enthusiasm in which he described the president. It
also lived up to Obama’s fears, as more people talked about Clinton’s speech in
the weeks following than his own.
But after his re-election, Obama began to have
second thoughts. He would prefer to stay neutral in the next election, as is
traditional of outgoing presidents.
Bill Clinton went ballistic and threatened
retaliation. Obama backed down. He called his favorite journalist, Steve Kroft
of “60 Minutes,” and offered an unprecedented “farewell interview” with
departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The result was a slobbering televised love-in
— and an embarrassment to all concerned.
It is just one of the debacles that have
marked Obama’s second term, from Benghazi to the IRS scandal. While he was
effective on the campaign trail, once in the Oval Office, he becomes a
different person, one who derives no joy from the cut and thrust of day-to-day
politics and who is inept in the arts of management and governance.
Obama has made a lot of promises — and nothing
ever happened.
He once boasted that he’d bring the Israelis
and Palestinians to the negotiating table and create a permanent peace in the
Middle East. Nothing happened.
He said he’d open a constructive dialogue with
America’s enemies in Iran and North Korea and, through his special powers of
persuasion, help them see the error of their ways. And nothing happened.
He said he’d solve the worst financial crisis
since the Great Depression and put millions of people back to work. And nothing
happened.
He may yet try to back out of his promise to
Hillary Clinton. But as Obama’s presidency sinks deeper into scandal and
inaction, the question is — will Clinton even still want his endorsement?
Adapted
from the new paperback edition of Edward Klein’s “The Amateur: Barack Obama in
the White House” (Regnery Publishing), out this week.
