This just might qualify for whopper of the week, or at least this morning.
Those drawn to politics will surely remember former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs, whose bland guy-next-door facade failed to hide a chronic tendency to misdirect.
Gibbs was back at it today, appearing on Meet the Press and apparently auditioning for a cozy sinecure in a potential second Clinton presidency.
MTP host Chuck Todd asked if Hillary Clinton's prospects aren't hurt by Mitt Romney possibly running again, since both might get consigned to the dustbin of failed former candidates desperately trying again --
TODD: You guys successfully prosecuted the we're fresh in 2007, Clintons are part of the past (alluding to Gibbs' work on the first Obama presidential campaign). Hillary Clinton's got, how does she not get sucked into this vortex 'cause Romney, I think, has created this storyline right now of, oh my God, it's Romney, it's Huckabee, it's Bush, it's Clinton, like she gets sucked into that vortex. How does she avoid it?
GIBBS: Well, I don't think that she that Democrats believe the nostalgia for Clinton ends with tragic losses in two different presidential campaigns.
Took me a moment to realize that Gibbs was alluding to 2008 and 2000 -- but "tragic" for both? Sorry, it's an adjective that should be reserved for only two presidential campaigns -- Robert Kennedy's in 1968, which ended with his assassination, and George Wallace's four years later, when a would-be assassin put Wallace in a wheelchair for life --
GIBBS: I think they believe that her resume as secretary of state is something that lifts her up.
This was more than even Todd could let pass without acknowledgment, but the pushback could not have been more demure. Gibbs jumped from the words "lifts her up" to his next sentence in an obvious attempt to prevent a challenge, but Todd interrupted him --
TODD: Do you believe that?
In other words, does that include the Democrat I'm speaking to now? Gibbs then confirmed that he's among the true believers of this dubious premise --
GIBBS: I, I do, I, look, I think if you're Mitt Romney, there isn't one negative that you had in either 2008 or 2012 that you've in any way mitigated leading into 2016. There's no reason to believe that 3.0 is going to be any different than 2.0.
... compared to Hillary 2.0, which is vastly improved from Hillary 1.0, thanks to her stellar turn at State in the interim. It would have made for great Sunday morning TV and better future ratings for MTP had Todd asked the obvious question -- could you cite Clinton's accomplishments as secretary of state? Even a single one will suffice.
Assuming Clinton runs, it's a question she might duck from liberal allies in the media and long-shot lefty challengers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, Bolshevik of Vermont -- but not a chance in hell she won't get hit with it from the GOP nominee in 2016, seeing how it's her Achilles' heel. (Then again, it might be yet another sex scandal involving her incorrigible lesser half.)
How does Clinton answer the question? She famously flubbed it when asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer last June, declining to cite a single example. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a sympathetic scribe, could reel off only generalities in her defense.
When Clinton is asked again, her answer presumably won't include the work she did in protecting diplomatic personnel in Benghazi, Iraq's descent into an ISIS stronghold, Syria's civil war fueling the threat from jihadists, China's growing bellicosity, the Russian "reset" followed by a rekindled Cold War, Iran undeterred in its pursuit of nukes.
What's Clinton got left? Frequent-flier miles in hitting 112 countries, reportedly a record for a secretary of state -- but this reflects little more than mutual loathing between the Obamas and Clintons, as detailed in "Blood Feud," and the president's preference that she stay out of town instead of second-guessing him at home.
Gibbs also claims Clinton will "almost certainly be the nominee" -- echoing the conventional wisdom from the winter of 2007. It came across as chutzpah the last time Democrats were saying this, through nearly all of 2007 until Clinton encountered an unexpectedly strong challenge in a little known first-term senator from Illinois. You'd think more in the way of humility would be offered this time around.
