The first big Hollywood mogul to endorse Obama and open up on Senator Clinton reminds us of why Ms. Clinton is not the inevitable nominee.
David Geffen, once among Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton's biggest financial backers, threw Hollywood's first mega-fundraiser of the election cycle on Tuesday — for Barack Obama. His criticism of Hillary Clinton, reported Wednesday by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, sparked an amusingly overwrought exchange between the Clinton and Obama camps.
The LATimes thinks that Ms. Clinton problem is the one that Geffen mentioned:
Geffen was on to something with his passing mention of the fact that Obama is not from "the Bush royal family" or the "Clinton royal family." Regardless of what you think of Bill Clinton's presidency, or his wife's talent, the dynastic aspect of Hillary Clinton's candidacy is an issue that will increasingly come to occupy center stage in this campaign. Is the country prepared to be governed, potentially, for 28 years by two families who alternate turns in the White House?
I think that's nonsense. If we really come to feel comfortable with Hillary, her last name, or the part after the hyphen, won't matter. What does matter is Geffen's real motive for trying to torpedo his former friends. This, from NewsMax:
DreamWorks co-chairman Geffen and Bill Clinton were once close, and Geffen raised some $18 million for Clinton. He was even a guest in the White House's Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton presidency.
Geffen turned his back on his friend when he pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich in the last days of his administration – after rebuffing Geffen’s request for a pardon for Leonard Peltier.
In June 1975 – during protests by the American Indian Movement – federal agents entered a ranch on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Following a shootout, two agents were found shot at close range through the head.
Peltier, who was on the reservation that day, fled to Canada but was later extradited, convicted of murder and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. He remains behind bars. Supporters, including Geffen, have claimed that authorities falsified evidence and withheld other evidence at the trial, and have long sought a pardon for Peltier, now 62 and in poor health.
Apparently, Bill Clinton promised that he was going to pardon Peltier before he left office. No doubt Bill put on his deeply concerned face, and declared that he shared Mr. Geffen and Mr. Peltier's pain, as he made that promise. But he didn't issue that pardon. Instead he pardoned someone else, with no principle higher than money and favors to explain it.
It is that kind of baggage that now leaves the Clinton candidacy short a mogul or two. In the coming days, a lot of Hollywood hotshots will conclude that they don't want to carry it for eight more years.
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