By: Jonah Goldberg

True or not, the Clinton campaign has been accused of playing the race card. The irony here, of course, is that Bill and Hillary only have themselves to blame for employing the kinds of political tactics now being used against them.

As the Barack and Hillary Show extended its tour to such off-off-off Broadway primary states as Indiana and North Carolina (coming soon to Puerto Rico!), it was inevitable that both sides would dust off the "playing the race card" script.

Recently, Bill Clinton was asked whether he had played the race card when he compared Barack Obama’s South Carolina victory to Jesse Jackson’s in 1984 and 1988. "No," he said in one of his typical outbursts of enraged self-pity. "I think that they played the race card on me, and we now know … that they planned to do it all along." Then Clinton added to an aide — without realizing he was being recorded — "I don’t think I should take any s—- from anybody on that, do you?"Oh, the ironies. First, Clinton’s initial comments were entirely valid. Obama boasts enormous black support, more than 90%, and that’s what put him (and Jackson)over the top in South Carolina. Second, while it’s arguable that the Clinton campaign has, at the margins, played the race card against Obama, it’s hardly been with much gusto, effectiveness or racism.

Where’s the racism?

Indeed, Obama’s spinners must be yoga masters considering how far they have to stretch to make their case. Betsy Reed, of the left-wing magazine The Nation, cites the Clinton campaign’s reference to Obama’s past drug use (raised most prominently by black Clinton surrogate Bob Johnson) and Bill’s belittling of Obama’s claims of anti-war purity as a "fairy tale" as examples of invidious racial politics.

Huh? Bill Clinton’s marijuana use was an issue in 1992 and, in 2000, the press went bonkers over allegations that George W. Bush had used drugs long ago. So why should it be racist to mention Obama’s even more significant drug use? Likewise, the use of the phrase "fairy tale" wasn’t racial. Even Hillary’s entirely valid, but now-infamous, observation that it was Lyndon Johnson, not Martin Luther King Jr., who secured passage of the Civil Rights Act can be described as racist only if the standard for racism is reduced to anything that hurts Obama. Dubbing inconvenient truths as "racist" is poisonous to U.S. politics. Which is why I have so little sympathy for the Clintons because it was the Clintons themselves who mainstreamed crying racism (or sexism or, in the case of Chinese fundraising scandals, anti-Chinese sentiment) in response to criticism.

Throughout his tenure as both "the first feminist" and "first black" president, Clinton Inc. routinely ascribed political opposition to bigotry. At a conference on race in 1997, Bill Clinton famously wheeled on Harvard scholar Abigail Thernstrom
— a high-minded critic of racial quotas — and bullied her with the question: "Do you favor the United States Army abolishing the affirmative action program that produced Colin Powell? Yes or no?" The tactic was no less brilliant for its cynical dishonesty. (Among the problems with Clinton’s ambush: Powell didn’t benefit from any affirmative action programs, which weren’t in place when he joined the Army nor even when he became a general.)

In 1999, when the Senate rejected his nominee for a Missouri judgeship, Clinton exclaimed that "the Republican-controlled Senate is adding credence to the perceptions that they treat women and minority judicial nominees unfairly." The Clintonites reflexively lamented how "angry white men" were standing in the way of progress, and even resorting to violence. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton fingered the real culprit: Rush Limbaugh.

Then, of course, there was Bill Clinton’s double-dealing of the race card during his impeachment struggle. As my National Review colleague Jay Nordlinger noted at the time, "Whenever Clinton gets into trouble, he reaches for black people, as if for a shield."

Impeachment defense

The first weekend of the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton suddenly invited his old nemesis Jackson to become the family’s spiritual adviser. He summoned black pastors, radio personalities and a battalion of black lawyers. Slowly — but oh so deliberately — the message went forth: Impeaching the first black president was racist. Rep. Charlie Rangel compared him to Martin Luther King. In response to the Starr report, Rep. Maxine Waters said that she was "here in the name of my slave ancestors" to thwart the racist assault on this honorary black man. When asked on BET whether Republicans wanted him impeached because of his affinity for blacks, Clinton responded, "It may be," wink wink, "that that’s a source of anger and animosity toward me."

Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, the Clinton’s reliable water-carrier, got the memo, saying of the all-white Republican impeachment handlers, "I mean frankly, all they were missing was white sheets. They’re like night riders going over. This is bigger than Bill Clinton."

Hillary Clinton played similar games, of course, insinuating sexism when convenient. But even if she didn’t, it’s worth remembering that she wants credit for being something akin to a co-president in the ’90s. Fine, it’s her record, too.

It’s no wonder the Clintons don’t like it when Obama and his supporters cynically complain that attacks on him are racially motivated; they’re dealing his own race card back at him. This surely stings as Bill no doubt sees this as ingratitude from a constituency he has long taken for granted. And we’d all be better off if this card were tossed from the deck. But make no mistake: Nobody should shed any tears for the Clintons.

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Bob Johnson - ‘An American success story & an African-American tragedy’

By: Leonard Pitts Jr.

Columnist - Leonard Pitts Jr.

I bet Hillary Clinton wishes Bob Johnson would stop trying to help her. Johnson is the billionaire founder of Black Entertainment Television and the Clinton supporter who embarrassed his candidate and himself during the South Carolina primary by clumsily attempting to inject Barack Obama’s self-confessed youthful drug use into the campaign and then clumsily denying he was doing it.

To judge from his latest comments, he still hasn’t learned to engage brain before operating mouth.

In March, Johnson told The Charlotte Observer that he agreed with comments that forced Geraldine Ferraro to resign from Clinton’s campaign last month. Ferraro essentially called Obama the affirmative-action candidate, saying that if he were not black, he would not be the political phenom he is.

Said Johnson, “What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called ‘Jerry Smith’ and he says, ‘I’m going to run for president,’ would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote? And the answer is, probably not.”
Naturally, Johnson is wrong.

If being black conferred, as he and Ferraro seem to think, some mysterious advantage in politics (unlike in virtually every other field of endeavor), Jesse Jackson would have been president years ago. He is, after all, black. As are Al Sharpton and Alan Keyes. All tried, yet none came close to winning the presidency.

Johnson is also wrong about black support for Obama.

As recently as December, Gallup pollsters found Clinton had significantly “higher” favorable ratings among black voters than Obama.

Of course, that was before Obama’s resounding victory in Iowa, Clinton’s gaffe about Martin Luther King’s role in the civil rights movement, and clanking attempts by Clinton surrogates like Johnson to kneecap Obama.

For the record, Barack Obama became a political phenomenon for the exact reason a political novice named Ross Perot did: he moved voters.

But Perot is white. I’d love to see how Johnson fits that into his crackpot thesis.

It’s not just that he’s wrong on the facts that’s galling but, rather, that he is wrong on something deeper.

If you are black, after all, you are used to this, used to having your achievements — and failures — lazily conflated with your skin color. It’s an easy hook for those who lack the imagination or intelligence to dig deeper. Like Rush Limbaugh, who said in 2003 that Donovan McNabb only became a football star because he’s black.

You’d expect Johnson, as a black man, to know better. Especially since he’s surely seen his success diminished this same way. You think no one ever said Johnson (who, according to a Washington Post report, went to Princeton on an affirmative-action program) only became a billionaire because he’s black?

But then, Johnson has never identified overmuch with black folks’ struggles. He once told C-SPAN he acknowledged no responsibility to be a role model for his community.

“What are my responsibilities to black people at large?” he asked. “If I help my family get over and deal with the problems they might confront, then I have achieved that one goal that is my responsibility to society at large.”

And the rest of y’all Negroes is on your own.

Johnson proved his regard for his people by exploiting them on his network, poisoning our kids with a video parade of gyrating backsides, gold grills and pimp values, a caricature of black life so unremittingly racist as to make the Ku Klux Klan redundant.

I pity him. He is an American success story and an African-American tragedy: a selfish, sterling example of the self-loathing so common among marginalized peoples.

On the plus side, I don’t think he has to worry about being called a role model.

About The Author: Leonard Pitts Jr. won the Pulitzer PrizeAnd-the-Winner-Is-Them-Again for commentary in 2004. He is the author of Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood. His column runs every Monday and Friday. Email Leonard at lpi...@MiamiHerald.com or visit his website at www.leonardpittsjr.com

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