Only days before he will nominate Barack Obama for re-election, a new report claims that in 2008, former President Bill Clinton said of him: “A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags.”
Clinton allegedly made the racially insensitive remark to Sen. Ted Kennedy as he tried to convince the liberal lion to endorse his wife, Hillary, Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, according to The New Yorker.
Kennedy endorsed Obama.
The author of the article, Ryan Lizza, said he he heard about the comment from legendary NBC newsman Tim Russert, who died in 2008.
The reported comment was similar to one attributed to Clinton in a 2010 book.
“A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,” Clinton is quoted as saying in “Game Change,” by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.
Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC, isn’t until Wednesday night — but the former president is getting attention for remarks he has already made.
He has, for example, called Obama “incompetent” and “an amateur” who has no clue about how the world operates, according to an article in Sunday’s Post by Edward Klein, author of “The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House.”
“Obama doesn’t know how to be president,” Clinton told friends and political advisers last year, the article added. “He doesn’t know how the world works.”
Klein said Clinton had convened a meeting at his Chappaqua, Westchester, home to urge his wife to challenge Obama for the 2012 nomination.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state, rejected the advice, Klein said.
A Bill Clinton spokesman did not immediately return an e-mail requesting comment last night.
Obama advisers had tried to keep the former president off the big stage this week, according to Klein, wanting to relegate him to a minor, nonprime-time speaking role. But Bill Clinton threatened to boycott the convention unless he was given a prominent role, the article said.
Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, argued that Obama needed Clinton more than Clinton needed him, according to Klein.
“And so, Clinton was signed on to remind voters of the glory days of a Democratic president’s economy,’’ Klein wrote.
Meanwhile, Obama kicked off his “Road to Charlotte” tour yesterday by unveiling a preview of his message to convention Democrats — telling University of Colorado students that the Republicans’ economic vision is spent.
“They are exhausted of ideas,” he said.
He offered a harsh critique of last week’s Republican National Convention, saying speakers spent too much time talking about him and Mitt Romney.
“But they didn’t spend a lot of time talking about you,” Obama said. “Everything you heard from them — what little you did hear — we’ve heard before.”
He criticized Romney’s plan to repeal the 2010 health-care law, saying it would cost millions of people insurance coverage.
“He calls it ObamaCare,” the president said. “I kind of like the name — I do care.”
Obama then suggested the Republican alternative could be called “Romney Doesn’t Care.”
After Colorado, Obama planned to head to another pivotal state, Ohio, where he speaks today.
Meanwhile, amid the flap over Clint Eastwood’s gig at the GOP convention — where the 82-year-old actor scolded an empty chair representing Obama — a petition has made the rounds urging Democrats to have “Golden Girl” Betty White, 90, introduce Obama at the DNC.