Bill Clinton: Don't get distracted

Former President Bill Clinton campaigned for his wife at Phoenixville High School in Phoenixville, Pa., on Wednesday. AP Photo by Matt Rourke.

by Rick Pearson

Former President Bill Clinton discloses in a fundraising e-mail to supporters today that he’s advised his wife, Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton to “block out the distractions—the skeptics, the media coverage, the beltway chatter—and keep your eyes on the prize.”

“With the news media constantly pouring over the minutiae of the campaign, I make sure Hillary never forgets to stay focused on what matters: telling every last American about her vision, her experience and her commitment to bringing real change to people’s lives,” the former president writes.

“Let the press worry about the shifting polls and the daily back-and-forth,” Bill Clinton advises. “As long as Hillary stands up for the values we share—and as long as you stand up for her—she’s going to win this race.”

The former president’s advice belies the Clinton administration’s heavy reliance on polling during his tenure in the White House, as well as a Hillary Clinton campaign that has extensively tried to promote media coverage of what it believes to be the flaws of rival Democratic presidential contender, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, as it tries to sway voters and those all-important superdelegates that she's more electable in spite of recent polls showing otherwise.

And there’s little doubt that Bill Clinton’s surrogate travel on his wife’s campaign’s behalf has had its own share of controversy, most recently when he embellished in delivering his own defense of her exaggerated version of landing in Bosnia “under sniper fire” as the result of her being tired, even though she told the story several times in the prolonged campaign.