Bill Clinton remarks spark fresh campaign row
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A fresh row exploded Saturday between the two rival US Democratic candidates after a Barack Obama advisor compared former president Bill Clinton to anti-Communist crusader Joseph McCarthy for attacking Obama's patriotism.
On Friday in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bill Clinton told military veterans: "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country.
"And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."
The former president apparently referred to his wife Hillary Clinton and Republican presumptive nominee John McCain, leaving Obama out in the cold.
The exclusion led an Obama advisor, retired air force general Merrill McPeak, to blast Clinton for unfairly calling the Illinois senator's patriotism into question.
"As one who for 37 years proudly wore the uniform of our country, I'm saddened to see a president employ these kind of tactics," McPeak told Obama supporters in Medford, Oregon.
"He of all people should know better because he was the target of exactly the same kind of tactic when he first ran 16 years ago," he said, with Obama at his side.
McPeak's comments apparently referred to attacks Bill Clinton sustained in the 1992 presidential campaign from then-president George H.W. Bush, who had raised questions about a trip Clinton took to Moscow in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam war.
On Friday McPeak likened Clinton's comments to the actions of Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s senator who led a campaign to root out communists and pro-Soviet Americans.
"I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I've had enough of it," McPeak told reporters.
Hillary Clinton's campaign swiftly denounced McPeak's comments as "a pathetic misreading" of the president's remarks.
"Comparing Bill Clinton to Joseph McCarthy is an outrage and ought to be retracted," Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson told reporters.
The ex-president has been tireless in backing his wife's battle for the Democratic nomination, but he has proven a liability at times, especially when his attacks on Obama have boomeranged to harm her campaign.
