There’s been a lot of rough news for Hillary Clinton in the last 72 hours. And a lot of unforced errors. But I think on this MLK and Lyndon Johnson remark, the edited quote that’s circulating from The Politico is misleading.
The Politico quote is …
“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Clinton said. “It took a president to get it done.”
But I think the full quote reads differently.
You can see the video here. The exchange starts at 3:40 in. Fox’s Major Garrett reads Clinton a quote from a speech Obama gave earlier in the day.
Here’s the Obama quote he reads …
“False Hopes. Dr King standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over the magnificent crowd, the reflecting pool, the Washington Monument, sorry guys, false hopes, the dream will die, it can’t be done, false hope, we don’t need leaders who tell us what we can’t do, we need leaders to tell us what we can do and inspire us.”
He then asks if she would respond and she says …
“I would, and I would point to the fact that that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.”
It’s an ambiguous statement. But her reference is to different presidents — Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, one of whom inspired but did relatively little legislatively and Johnson who did a lot legislatively, though he was rather less than inspiring. Quite apart from the merits of Obama and Clinton, it’s not a bad point about Kennedy and LBJ.
Now I know in writing this I’m going to get tons of emails saying I’m defending an indefensible statement, making excuses for her, etc. I’m not. It’s poorly worded, and easy to misunderstand. And it will be misunderstood. Her ‘false hopes’ line from the debate was one of the worst of the campaign. And you can read her realization of the dream point as putting a lot of focus on legislation and sort of discounting activism. But when I look at the actual words in this statement it just doesn’t match up with the line that’s circulating — that she was saying Obama’s King and she’s LBJ.
The Politico quote at a minimum distorts what she said. And I thought I should say so.
