I don’t see how any of the bad things that have happened to me are my fault. As I tell my campaign audiences, if you want someone to blame, phone Midland, Texas, and ask for W.
People say I’ve lost my mojo. But is it my fault that Scott Walker won the recall election in Wisconsin and knocked the stuffing out of the Democratic Party’s union base? Is it my fault that Eric Holder has gotten his knickers in the ringer with Congress?
So I make one gaffe at a campaign stop and say that people who’ve got a business didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen, and suddenly the mainstream media comes down on me with both feet. Time magazine’s Joe Klein compares my campaign to Lee Atwater’s Willie Horton smear campaign, and The New York Times’ Tom Friedman says I don’t have any big ideas. Have those guys forgotten that they’re supposed to be in the tank for me?
As if all this wasn’t bad enough, my crazy old pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has surfaced in a new book called “The Amateur.” In a three-hour tape-recorded interview, Wright said that I tried to silence him during the 2008 campaign. Duh. What else was I supposed to do?
Then, to make matters worse, Bill Clinton has strayed off the reservation and praised Mitt’s performance at Bain Capital as “sterling” and said that Mitt has the credentials to make a fine president. I get Bill’s game: He wants me to lose in 2012 so that Hillary will have a sitting Republican president to run against in 2016.
Well, I’ve got news for Bill. If I lose this election, I’m going to come back and run in 2016 and whup Hillary in the primaries all over again. That’ll show him.
And that’ll show Miche, too.
Edward Klein, author of “The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House,” is a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including “The Truth About Hillary.” He is the former foreign editor of Newsweek, former editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine, and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair.
