THE NOTE: 'Say Anything'

Jan. 24, 2008 -- We are pleased to deliver a few pieces of good news to the Republican presidential candidates, as they get ready to debate Thursday night in Boca Raton, Fla.:

1. The debate is free. (Florida loves a good bargain -- your grandparents would be proud --- and who couldn't use some help these days?)

2. Only one of you has to be really close to Mitt Romney. (That would be John McCain -- and don't worry, Mitt's wallet looks less scary up close.)

3. Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee -- your aides may very well be able to draw paychecks again soon (*though not, in all likelihood, from the campaign). McCain aides may also get paid full salaries again in the near future -- but for different reasons (and yes, he's embracing Democrats' worst nightmare label).

4. There will be exactly zero Clintons on stage, though they will be as available as ever as verbal targets. (But former President Bill Clinton's new favorite target -- the news media -- will be out in full force.)

What exactly is it that has Bill Clinton so upset?

Is he angry that his strategy -- directing scrutiny at Sen. Barack Obama's record -- is working?

Perturbed that his wife's campaign can't be the underdog Feb. 5, having too systematically kept Obama on the defensive?

Just slightly worried that national polls show Obama closing the gap?

Of the various presidential purple episodes that have marked this campaign, surely this is the strangest: President Clinton sharply reprimanded CNN's Jessica Yellin (just asking for a response to an allegation): "You wanna make this about words and name calling. I hate it," he said, per ABC's Sarah Amos. "They're feeding you this because they know this is what you want. This is what you live for. . . . One more story. Shame on you. Shame on you!" ("They" are having a rough day.)

First the facts: The president said: "Not one single solitary citizen asked about any of this, and they never do." Actually -- that depends on the meaning of "not one single solitary." ABC's Kate Snow, Sunlen Miller, and Sarah Amos report: "Clinton was asked late today in rural Kingstree, S.C., about Sen. Barack Obama and how race is factoring into this campaign."

Remind us of why it is part of the discussion? Why Ted Kennedy/Rahm Emanuel/Jim Clyburn/Tom Daschle/Patrick Leahy are worried about the campaign's turn to the gutter?

"Bill Clinton says race shouldn't be an issue in the Democratic presidential campaign. Well, then perhaps he should stop talking about it," AP's Ron Fournier writes. "It would likely work to Hillary Clinton's advantage to have the electorate polarized by race, given that most Feb. 5 voters will be white and Hispanic; she won the Hispanic vote overwhelmingly in last week's Nevada caucus. . . . 'Shame on you!' he told a reporter. Shame on anybody who plays the race card."

Maybe these outbursts are coincidences (though three feels like a pattern). Maybe (OK, probably) the media is making too much of all of this (though Bill Clinton of all people should know that conflict = story).

Whatever the motivations, Bill Clinton is ensuring that the Obama campaign has its hands full this week, even as Obama, D-Ill., heads toward a likely victory in South Carolina. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., doesn't even have to be in the state (and she isn't though she returns -- briefly -- on Thursday, for a speech on the economy) to stay in the conversation, as she builds toward Feb. 5.

Maybe what has the former president concerned is that Kennedy/Emanuel/Clyburn/Daschle/Leahy have seen enough (remember that the first three of those five elder statesman -- sorry, Rahm, but you're old for your age) are still officially neutral in the race, though they don't have to be.

"There is some fear within the party that if Obama becomes the nominee, he could emerge personally battered and politically compromised," Alec MacGillis and Anne Kornblut write in The Washington Post.

"And there is concern that a Clinton victory could come at a cost -- particularly a loss of black voters, who could blame her for Obama's defeat and stay home in November."

"Should a former president be acting this way?" Marcella Bombardieri writes in The Boston Globe.

"Several prominent Democrats say no. In recent days, they have publicly warned that he is hurting his party and his own status as elder statesman by taking on the highly charged role of critic-in-chief of Hillary Clinton's main Democratic rival, Barack Obama."

The Clinton campaign took one of Bill Clinton's main lines of attack to the airwaves, playing Obama's praise of Republicans as "the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time" and then twisting all context out of them. Says the ad: "Aren't those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we're in today? Ideas like special tax breaks for Wall Street. Running up a $9 trillion debt. Refusing to raise the minimum wage or deal with the housing crisis. Are those the ideas Barack Obama's talking about?"

Writes ABC's Jake Tapper, "At this point, the Clintons obviously know and don't care that this is a blatantly false representation of what Obama said, which doesn't square with the video or transcript of what Obama said. . . . With unanimity, the charge has been established as false. And yet the Clintons continue to make it."

The State's first-day coverage of the ad takes full account of the reverberations. "It's attack and apologize later," state Rep. Todd Rutherford tells The State's John O'Connor, "and all it's going to do is divide black leadership as soon as they leave here."

It's prompted a harsh counterattack from the Obama campaign, ABC's Sunlen Miller reports. In "a feisty radio ad" airing in South Carolina, the announcer addresses the Ronald Reagan comments, the minimum wage, tax cuts, corporate tax loopholes, NAFTA stance, and reminds people that Clinton voted for "George Bush's war in Iraq."

The announcer concludes, "Hillary Clinton. She'll say anything and change nothing."

But Politico's Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris think it's not enough of a response: "He has wandered into a tactical battle --