Congressman to Bill Clinton: ‘Chill a little bit’
Posted: 09:30 AM ET
Clyburn is calling for an end to the Obama-Clinton spat.
Clyburn is calling for an end to the Obama-Clinton spat.
(CNN) – House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, whose criticism of Hillary Clinton’s recent remarks on Martin Luther King Jr. helped fuel a heated back and forth between the New York senator and Barack Obama, said Monday it was time another Clinton watched his words.
Bill Clinton’s attacks on Barack Obama, Clyburn said in a CNN interview, were unfair because a former president’s viewpoint “carries with it extra weight.”
“I think they would say in Gullah-Geechee country, he needs to chill a little bit. I hope he understands what that means,” Clyburn told John Roberts on CNN’s American Morning. “I can understand him wanting to defend his wife’s honor and his own record, and that is to be expected. But you can’t do that in a way that won’t engender the kind of feelings that seem to be bubbling up as a result of this.”
“I think he is a former president of these United States. He is revered in many sections of the African-American community, and I think he can afford to tone it down,” he added.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, the South Carolina congressman had said he was disappointed with comments from Hillary Clinton that some took to suggest President Lyndon Johnson had more to do with passing the Civil Rights Act than Martin Luther King, Jr. He also expressed frustration over Bill Clinton’s recent remark that the characterization of Obama’s record on Iraq as consistently anti-war is a “fairy tale.”
“We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics,” he told the New York Times. “It is one thing to run a campaign and be respectful of everyone’s motives and actions, and it is something else to denigrate those. That bothered me a great deal.”
Last week, Clyburn said it was time for both Hillary Clinton and Obama to move on. He said Bill Clinton had called twice to explain what he meant by his comments — most recently, an hour after the congressman returned to the United States from a trip abroad. He also said he’d spoken to Hillary Clinton about the issue, and has accepted both Clintons’ explanations of their comments.
“I don’t think we ought to be so politically correct about everything that we say every time someone makes a mistake, ‘throw the person off the campaign,’ or something of that sort,” he said. “I think what we do is accept their explanation as to what they meant by what they said and go on. A lot of people who work in campaigns get very excited sometimes.”
Clyburn, one of the most powerful African-Americans in Congress, has continued to insist he will not endorse any presidential candidate, upholding a pledge to the candidates and to the Democratic Party that he would stay out of the race ahead of his state’s key January vote.
–CNN’s Rebecca Sinderbrand and Alexander Mooney
Source: politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com
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