Bill screwed up: réaction de l'entourage de Bill Clinton

 On tente de réparer les pots cassés? Bien sûr, Clinton n'est pas un employé d'Obama, mais tout de même...

"Bill Clinton’s off-message musings in recent days on Mitt Romney, taxes and the state of the economy prompted a series of urgent and agitated calls between senior aides to both Clinton and President Barack Obama.

In the past, these kinds of complaints have often prompted Clinton lieutenants to kindly suggest that the Obama team can go to hell: a former president can, should and will say what he wants.

This time was different: Clinton’s team was as aghast as Obama’s at how the boss had wandered blithely into remarks that left even sympathetic listeners wondering what exactly he was getting at. He also gave gleeful Republicans an opening to skewer Obama with a popular Democrat’s own words.

Clinton, in a ritual that would be familiar to anyone who has worked for him during the past 20 years, protested that his words were being wrested from context and blamed a manipulative news media for stirring up trouble to satisfy its own lust for chaos and conflict.

 But his own team, and eventually Clinton himself, agreed there was no choice but to issue embarrassing what-the-former-president-meant-to-say clarifications, which were crafted in close consultation with senior Obama aides at the White House and campaign headquarters in Chicago, according to people involved in the negotiations.

The clarifications did little to quiet the political speculation industry’s preoccupation with what Clinton was really up to: Trying to send a brushback pitch of some kind to Obama? Trying to win personal favor among Wall Street Republicans? Or perhaps engaged in some carom-shot calculation to help Hillary Clinton if she runs for president in 2016.

 The genuine explanation, say people close to Clinton, is the same one that usually is the case: He was simply saying what he really thought, but in fuzzy, free-associating language almost guaranteed to produce controversy.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77147.html