It took me a couple of days to process what Hillary Clinton
said about Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson. Perhaps it was lost in the din of the
Had Hillary said that any similarities between Obama and King in rhetoric can not be found in action, no one would be outraged. And she did just that as she started to backtrack from her original statement. What she initially said though was that King was style, and Johnson was substance. Taken in the worst possible way, it implies that the civil rights movement was not about blacks standing up, but about a white man coming to their rescue. Never mind all the black men and women who organized, marched, fought, bled, were jailed, and died for the cause of civil rights, including Reverend King - "it took a President." Johnson certainly played his role, but to equate his actions with those of Reverend King is ludicrous.
Interestingly, there are other subjects that help reinforce
this analogy between Clinton-Obama and LBJ-MLK, such as King's opposition to
the Johnson-sponsored Vietnam War. The
strongest analogy however can be found with the styles of the two
campaigns. Obama, like MLK, uses speech
to empower and enable supporters to the cause that he is passionate about.
If she really was trying to paint Obama as MLK and herself as LBJ, it is pretty obvious that this is an analogy that any Obama supporter would be happy with. As someone who grew up worshipping people like Gandhi, Mandela and King, given the choice I know who I'd vote for...
