Speaking at Pass Christian, Mississippi, this morning, the former president fielded audience questions, the first such occurrence since the South Carolina leg of the campaign tours. While the majority of the questions asked of President Clinton involved Hurricane Katrina, the storm in which Pass Christian was all but completely destroyed, one curious audience member asked the former president if his wife would be willing to consider opponent Barack Obama for the position of Vice-President, a question that first arose before the New Hampshire and Iowa primaries. Unlike previous occasions where Clinton has stayed away from comment on the question, today he said that his candidate wife was indeed considering offering the position to Obama.
"She said yesterday and she said the day after her big wins in Texas and Ohio and Rhode Island that she was very open to that and I think she answered explicitly yes yesterday," Clinton began, referring to Hillary's own answers on the topic in recent days.
Clinton elaborated on his answer by stating that Hillary feels that having Obama on the ticket as her running mate would bring together the "the new people that he’s brought in and the people in these vast swaths of small town and rural America that she’s carried overwhelmingly" in a merging of energies that Clinton referred to as "an almost unstoppable force." Other questions and discussions centered around Senator Clinton's policy plans and Hurricane Katrina, a subject near and dear to the populace of Pass Christian.
Senator Obama, however, has already ruled out the possibility of his taking on the role of Vice-President, in an interview with Montana CBS affiliate KTVQ, in which he stated, "You won’t see me as a vice presidential candidate -- you know, I’m running for president. We have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton, and have a higher popular vote, and I think we can maintain our delegate count -- but you know, what I’m really focused on right now, because all that stuff is premature, is winning this nomination and changing the country."
In any event, former President Clinton is enjoying the entire process. having told a crowd in Mississippi, "This is the darndest campaign I ever saw in my life. It just goes on and on, but I like that."
