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player ready...by John McCormick and Mike Dorning, updated
COLUMBUS, Miss. – Sen. Barack Obama said today that Sen. Hillary Clinton has no standing – at least right now — to offer him the job as her vice presidential running mate.
“With all due respect, I’ve won twice as many states as Sen. Clinton. I’ve won more of the popular vote than Sen. Clinton. I have more delegates than Sen. Clinton,” he said. “So, I don’t know how somebody who is second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who is in first place. I mean, I’m just wondering…’cause if I was in second place I could understand it. But I’m in first place right now.”
Obama also pointed to a recent ad that suggests he is not ready to answer a 3 a.m. crisis phone call in the White House.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “If I’m not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president? Do you understand that?”
As he often does, Obama then turned to his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, which Clinton initially supported.
“I believe the most important thing when you answer that phone call at three in the morning is what kind of judgment do you have, not how long have you been in Washington,” he said. “I believe I have show better judgment than Sen. Clinton.”
Speaking inside a college field house to an audience his campaign said totaled 1,700, Obama sought to make perfectly clear that he is running for the top job.
“I’m not running for vice president. I’m running for president of the United States of America,” he said. “I’m running to be commander and chief.”
Obama also criticized Clinton for so publicly suggesting that Obama might make a good running mate, as he said she was trying to “hood-wink” voters.
“I do not believe Sen. Clinton is about change,” Obama said. “That’s exactly the kind of doublespeak, double-talk that Washington is very good at.”
The comments came shortly after Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign suggested Obama is not qualified for the job, at least not before his party’s national convention this summer.
“We do not believe that Sen. Obama has passed the commander-in-chief test,” said Howard Wolfson, her communications director. “But there is a long way between now and Denver.”
Wolfson said Clinton would not “rule out” Obama as a potential running mate, should he somehow prove he meets the requirements for a commander-in-chief between now and August.
Obama said he respected Clinton and considers her a friend. “She’ll be a friend of mine after this campaign because we are going to have to unify together to win in November,” he said.
But Obama also made clear that friends do not always get along.
“I was listening to some of the things Sen. Clinton said down here in Mississippi over the last couple days,” he said. “As I understand it, both Sen. Clinton and President Clinton repeatedly talked about how I would be a great vice president.”
The audience booed.
“They kept on saying, well, you know, he would be a fine vice president,” Obama said. “That would be a formidable team with Clinton at the top and Obama in second place.”
A Clinton-Obama ticket is an idea Clinton has repeatedly flirted with in recent days, following her wins last week in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island.
The Clinton campaign had been pressing the idea of a Clinton-Obama “dream ticket” as a way to win over Democrats torn between the two candidates at the same time it has been aggressively questioning Obama’s readiness to be commander-in-chief.
That has lead to questions seeking to resolve an apparent inconsistency in the possibility someone would be considered suitable to stand a heartbeat away from the presidency and yet be unprepared for the post.
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Campaigning in Mississippi over the weekend, former President Bill Clinton went so far as to call a joint ticket “an almost unstoppable force.”
In his analysis, Bill Clinton seemed to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates, saying Obama would win in urban areas and among upscale voters, while his wife would win rural areas.
“If you put those two things together, you’d have an almost unstoppable force,” Bill Clinton said.
In Mississippi herself last week, Hillary Clinton told voters: “You’ve got to make a choice. A lot of people wish they didn’t have to. A lot of people say ‘I wish I could vote for both of you.’ Well, that might be possible some day. But first I need your help on Tuesday.”
On Tuesday, Mississippi is the next state to hold a nominating contest following Obama’s win over the weekend in Wyoming.
Obama has, of course, been asked about a potential vice presidency dozens of times over the past year, always answering in a way that left the option open.
“We are just focused on winning this nomination,” he said when asked last week, the morning after he lost primaries in Ohio and Texas. “I think it is very premature to start talking about a joint ticket.”