A reference to the semen-stained dress that helped bring about President Bill Clinton’s impeachment has surfaced in the battle Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are waging to win the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination.
Former Iowa Democratic Party chairman Gordon Fischer has a blog, a web log, on which he publishes commentary on the Internet. In a weekend post, Fischer said Bill Clinton shouldn’t be forgiven for implying Obama doesn’t love his country as much as Senators Clinton or John McCain, then Fischer went on to say Clinton’s comments were a "stain on (the former president’s) legacy, much worse, much deeper than the one on Monica’s blue dress."
The Monica that Fischer’s referring to would be Monica Lewinsky, the infamous White House intern. A spokesman for the Clinton campaign called Fischer’s statement the "most personal attack yet" from the Obama camp, suggesting Fischer’s remark was both insulting and slanderous.
At about 10 o’clock this morning, Fischer, who is an attorney, deleted that statement and posted an apology. Fischer called his own Monica comment "tasteless and gratuitous" as well as "unnecessary and wrong."
Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, says Senator Obama believes the comments Fischer made "have no place in our political dialogue and he strongly rejects them."