Updated 6:35 p.m., January 27
Former President Bill Clinton returned to North Carolina this morning for the first time since the now-mythic primary battle between his wife/current Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and President Barack Obama.
- Shawn Rocco/The N&O
The (Raleigh) News and Observer reported this morning:
The last time Raleigh saw Bill Clinton, he was standing in the bed of an antique Ford pickup, wrapping up a furious 11-city barnstorm.Gesturing with his fist, he insisted that North Carolina voters would start an earthquake that would send Hillary Rodham Clinton to the White House -- a trick he suggested President Barack Obama couldn't pull off.
Luckily, however, the former president, who got himself into hot water in the midst of the campaign for overstepping his bounds, seems to have let go of his past beef with the former Illinois Senator and changed his tone. Speaking in front a packed audience at North Carolina State University as part of the NCSU's Millennium Lecture Series, organized by N.C.'s former first lady, Mary Easley, Clinton lauded the ascendency of the nation's first black president.
The N&O reported:
"The number one fact of life in the modern world and the most important thing about the election of President Obama," he said, is a sense of "communitarianism" that requires people to get along because their futures are bound together."It is possible to escape the burden of our history, because this is not a biracial country anymore, and we don't see ourselves that way anymore," he said. "We are we multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious. ... We haven't exactly moved to the left so much as we've moved forward together."
For those who didn't make it to the 10:30 event, the speech is being broadcast on UNC-TV tonight at 9 p.m.
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