My friend Tommy Christopher digs today’s entry out of a Richard Wolffe book on the Barack Obama campaign, Renegade: The Making of a President, which hit bookstores yesterday. Wolffe recounts the discussion among Obama and his advisers when the idea of appointing Hillary Clinton to State first arose. Hillary had a mountain of campaign debt and would want Obama’s help in retiring it, but Obama objected to the tone that would set:
“I’m not begging her to take this job,” Obama told his senior aides. “If she wants it, I could help. But I’m not willing to go out in these difficult economic times to do a flashy fundraiser in California.”
Considering that the economy had slowed by the summer of 2008 but had not crashed, Obama’s objection shows a remarkable sensitivity — which he completely abandoned to raise funds for another Democrat for a race over a year away and for which no Republican has yet declared a candidacy:
President Barack Obama told a Las Vegas audience Tuesday night that if they like what he’s been doing in office, they have Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., partly to thank.
At a sold-out fundraiser that was also a concert extravaganza, Obama was back in campaign mode as he had been in Nevada so many times before the election.
The president told the crowd of about 4,000 at the Caesars Palace Colosseum that Reid will need the grass-roots energy Obama rode to victory for his re-election next year.
I guess “times” got a lot better … for Obama.
Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.
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