The New York Post offered an op-ed on Monday adapted from the new paperback edition of Ed Klein's book The Amateur. Klein says Team Obama and Team Clinton made a deal last summer: Bill Clinton would give the key nominating speech at the Democratic convention in Charlotte endorsing Obama. In exchange, Obama would endorse Hillary Clinton as his successor. But after he won his second term, Obama had second thoughts about endorsing Hillary in 2016.
"Bill Clinton went ballistic and threatened retaliation. Obama backed down," Klein asserteed. "He called his favorite journalist, Steve Kroft of '60 Minutes,' and offered an unprecedented 'farewell interview' with departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton."
Klein said "The result was a slobbering televised love-in — and an embarrassment to all concerned."
It was a dramatic difference -- the same partisan hit squad that broke the story of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and promoted phony Bush National Guard records to try and destroy George W. Bush looked to all the world like a staff of servants summoned by the Democrats to patch everything up and keep everyone happy and unified.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal said assuming Klein's story is accurate, it could all backfire on Hillary. "With the current scandals and the impending implementation of ObamaCare, it's quite possible an Obama endorsement will be poisonous come 2016. Imagine if Richard Nixon had endorsed and campaigned for Gerald Ford in 1976. Mrs. Clinton may find that the man she seeks to replace is her worst frenemy."
