"Left behind in South Carolina, Bill Clinton became the attack dog of his wife's campaign," Lee Bandy writes in his column in The State. "His critiques of Obama brought a new level of divisiveness and rancor to the campaign, shocking South Carolinians who had never seen Clinton close up."
If you needed proof that he's been consistently and intentionally making the race about race, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding -- the former president's oh-so-casual mention of the fact that Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina (in caucuses, not primaries) should settle the matter.
"The Clintons paid a steep price for trying to marginalize Obama as a minority candidate. Their effort may still work; Obama won just a quarter of the white vote in South Carolina, and white voters dominate most of the states yet to hold elections," AP's Ron Fournier writes. "But, for one night at least, racial politics got marginalized."
Unless -- as is often the case with the former president -- Bill Clinton was operating at a level mere political mortals cannot hope to understand, playing chess while we've been watching checkers. Obama's is a diminished campaign because of South Carolina, if only slightly -- more defensive, more responsive, and just a bit worried about being turned into something his candidacy is all about NOT becoming: the "black candidate."
"In the longer term . . . the Bill Clinton effect could prove more effective for the campaign of the senator from New York," Michael Tackett writes in the Chicago Tribune. "The degree to which Obama is seen as a black candidate rather than a candidate who happens to be black is likely to play a larger role in the upcoming states, none of which have such sizable percentages of black voters as South Carolina. . . . Bill Clinton is often thought in the moment to be doing the wrong thing, when it turns out to be the right thing politically."
Newsweek's Evan Thomas and Suzanne Smalley grab the former president in all of his rope-line candor: "Let me just say that I went through a year and all I did was compliment Senator Obama and I continued to compliment him when he said in Iowa that my wife was a dishonest person. An untruthful person.. . . A person without character."