BOCA ESTUPIDA, FLORIDA — Just hours after apologizing for puzzling and downright inaccurate praise of Nancy Reagan’s efforts in raising awareness for the AIDS crisis in the 1980’s, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to walk back more eyebrow-raising praise she had given another Republican president.
“It may be hard remember how difficult it was for people to talk about Hurricane Katrina was back in the early 2000’s,” Ms. Clinton told a radio reporter during an interview in Florida, “And because of President George W. Bush we started a national conversation about hurricanes and not acting all that concerned about them until the devastation has gotten so horrible it looks like a Third World country. When before nobody would talk about hurricanes, nobody wanted to do anything about them, and that too is something that I really appreciate with his very effective, low key strategy of getting in a helicopter and flying over the horrors that people were still living thorough, but it penetrated the public conscious and people began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.'”
Immediately, Twitter and Facebook were abuzz anew with confused and angry comments about Clinton’s seeming praise for how George W. Bush handled his response to Hurricane Katrina. It’s been widely held that the Bush Administration made several key mistakes, many of them related to inaction, but it seemed that like her comments about Nancy Reagan’s AIDS advocacy, that Clinton was speaking as if she lived in a completely different universe.
Ms. Clinton quickly tweeted, “LOL, J/K re: Bush and Katrina y’all! #ReadyforHillary #JKSorry” but then at her next campaign stop she was assailed with questions from reporters and had to address them. She quickly said, “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what I was thinking!” She later gave a more detailed response.
“I’m sure we’ve all had one of those ‘Take a Quaalude, drink three fingers of gin, and talk about someone in a way that is literally the opposite of reality’ kinda days, haven’t we,” Clinton asked the media, “because that’s the kind of day I’ve had. Look, when you’re built to pander to every single room you’re in, you pander. And so sometimes I end up pandering when I shouldn’t. Whoopsie! Now, who wants to ask me about how inevitable my campaign is?”
The race between Ms. Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has heated up in recent days after Sanders’ stunning victory in the Michigan primary. However, Clinton still holds a nearly 200 delegate lead over Sen. Sanders. Clinton did not exit the contest in 2008 when she was facing now President Barack Obama until June.
