With all the verbal sparring occurring in the presidential campaign, when I saw the following headline, I thought the former President might be able to distinguish the policies of Mrs. Clinton from those of Senator Obama.

Bill Clinton wades in to defend Hillary’s reputation

Okay, I thought, maybe I will learn something of the Senator’s planned healthcare program which has been promoted by her campaign or her stance on the War on Terror, or maybe something about her plans for Social Security. Wrong again. Instead, according to the quotes available it was no more than a she’s better than him interview.

Moving past that, something else caught my eye. Did you know that terrorism did not exist in 1992? I recall terrorist attacks far earlier than that but it seems former President Clinton has no recollection of there being any such thing.

Asked about his own experience when he became President aged 46 - the same age as Mr Obama is now - Mr Clinton said that in contrast to 1992, “we didn’t have the terror threat. We didn’t have the troops in Iraq.

Alright then, no troops in Iraq, I’ll give to that but no terror threats? I wonder if he remembers the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Ramzi Yousef entered this country in 1992..I consider that a terror threat.

And, whether purveyors of terrorism commit their acts on US soil or abroad should have no distinction to a sitting President, so let’s consider this list:

1992
January 17: Eight Protestant British army contractors are killed by an IRA bomb on their way to work at an Army base near Omagh.
February 5: Three civilians were killed and 29 injuried by East Turkestan Islamic Movement two bus bombs in Urumqi (see: 5 February 1992 Urumqi Bombings)
February 28, 1992: A bomb explodes at London Bridge station injuring 29 people.
March 17: Israeli Embassy bombing by “Islamic Jihad” in Buenos Aires, Argentina; 29 killed, 242 injured.
April 5, 1992: The Iranian embassy in Ottawa is stormed by members of MEK, an Iraq-supported religious right group.
April 10, 1992: A large bomb explodes in St Mary Axe in the City of London killing three people and injuring 91. Many buildings are heavily damaged and the Baltic Exchange is completely destroyed.
September 1: Nine die, including a six-month old baby, and seven are injured when a bomb explodes in a suburb of Medellín.[76]
October 12, 1992: A device explodes in the gents’ toilet of the Sussex Arms public house in Covent Garden killing one person and injuring four others.
November 11: Bombs explode in nine Colombian cities, leaving one person dead and 35 injured. The Medellín Cartel is held responsible for the attacks.[77]
December 3: Ten police officers and four civilians die when a bomb planted by drug traffickers explode in Medellín.[78]
December 29: Two police officers and 50 civilians wounded when a car bomb explodes at a party in a suburban area of Medellín.[79

The citizens of Israel suffered at the hands of terrorists in 1992, and I would bet there were many other incidents which either were not reported or I simply have neglected to locate through limited research.

Terrorism existed long before President Clinton took the Oath of Office and will exist long past the time President Bush retires to Texas. I suppose it just depends on what your definition of terror is….in the US terror, abroad??????.

Chicago Sun-Times reporter Jennifer wrote a piece about Michelle Obama on the campaign trail and quoted her as saying:

At another stop, in Atlantic, Michelle said she travels with her husband in part “to model what it means to have family values,” adding “if you can’t run your own house, you can’t run the White House.” She didn’t elaborate, but it could be interpreted as a swipe at the Clintons.

That one statement in the entire article got a lot of press, with people surmising she was specifically talking about the Clintons.

Today she has a piece up that talks about the controversy surrounding her first piece.

But in the fifth paragraph of the story, I suggested that during an introduction to a speech by her husband, something she said could be interpreted as a swipe against the Clintons, and that set the tongues wagging, hit Drudge’s Web site, was discussed on CNN, ABC and MSNBC and prompted an e-mail from Michelle Obama’s communications director, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, who said I had completely misunderstood what Michelle Obama had said.

This is from Michelle Obama’s introduction to her husband’s speech: “. . . part of what we want to do as a family is to make sure that our children are sane, but also to model what it means to have family values in this country, and we haven’t seen that for a long time . . . [applause].

“One of the most important things that we need to know about the next president of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values, is he somebody that respects family, is a good and decent person? So our view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House.

“So we’ve adjusted our schedule to make sure that our girls are first, so when he’s traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning. I get the girls ready. I get them off. I go and do trips. I’m home before bedtime.”

Lelyveld told me in a phone conversation that Michelle Obama “was only referring to her family and making sure her girls are guided and strong.” It was not a jab at the Clintons, Lelyveld said.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Barack Obama told the Associated Press that his wife “has been making that speech constantly about the decision we made to make sure that our family was strong because if our family wasn’t that strong then we couldn’t be a strong leader in the White House.”

”The whole thing about Hillary has been completely fabricated,” Obama added. ”You guys have got to get it off your minds.”

…

”The whole thing about Hillary has been completely fabricated,” Obama added. ”You guys have got to get it off your minds.”

OK, but as I stood there in Atlantic, Iowa, listening to Michelle Obama talk and hearing the cadence of her speech, my immediate reaction was that she was obliquely referring to the Clintons.

Why did I think that?

Well, she said she and Barack were modeling “what it means to have family values in this country and we haven’t seen that for a long time” [emphasis added]. Wasn’t Bush the family values guy? What did Michelle mean by “we haven’t seen that [family values] for a long time”?

Then she talked about the future president being someone who “respects family . . .” Did Bill Clinton show respect for his family with his bimbo eruptions? Did he consider the impact on his child, let alone his wife?

Michelle Obama added: “So our view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House.”

Bang!

The Clintons certainly did have a hard time running the White House and their own house during the Monica Lewinsky affair as independent counsel Kenneth Starr and his henchmen began snooping around and President Clinton was impeached by Congress.

So you can see where I was going with this. It didn’t take a huge leap of logic. My mistake was not grabbing Michelle Obama when she left to ask for further elaboration — I was waiting to hear her husband speak.

When public people speak they should be clear in what they are saying so there is no doubt about the meaning of their words.

Michelle Obama may have been tired and not expressed herself fully, or she may have meant it the way it sounded.

It’s up to the individual to decide, but we have had family values in the White House for the last almost seven years at least. There has been no scandal regarding this president or his family, except when his girls were partying while they were in college, and many college kids do that. Doesn’t make it right, but it’s not a scandal. At least not in my eyes.