Once again Noemie Emery nails it on the Clintons: Reviewing the Clintons' dismissal of those who objected to preferential hiring and admission programs for the sake of diversity until faced with real competition from Obama:

Clinton's concern for preferences and healing did not survive the unlooked-for appearance of an appealing young black man who rose on the merits, and wanted the job being sought by Clinton's wife. Though perhaps his reaction against Obama did not come entirely out of the blue. Late in 1995, when Powell was being mentioned as a possible nominee in the upcoming election, Clinton was enraged at an unfair kind of bias--a preference!--in the treatment being given his possible foe. "He was irritated that Powell had not been held accountable for what Clinton felt was his negligence in the Somalia intervention and indifference to the Bosnia crisis," John Harris wrote. "Clinton was appalled at what seemed to be the patty-cake treatment given to Powell by the same news media that was hazing the president daily. 'They're giving him such a free ride, it's ridiculous,' he complained to [Dick] Morris. 'He comes on TV like a saint, and those white liberal guilty journalists are so awestruck that they won't ask him a damn question,' " he said.

In 2002, when Mississippi's Trent Lott misspoke in the course of a tribute to South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, the onetime segregationist, Clinton lashed out at the entire Republican party. "How can they jump on [Lott] when they're out there repressing," he blustered. "Look at their whole record. He just embarrassed them by saying in Washington what they do on the back roads every day."

Yet in 2008, when Barack Obama emerged as a menace to Hillary Clinton's White House ambitions, Bill (and Hillary) replied in a manner that would have thrilled Theodore Bilbo himself. In no time at all, Clinton was comparing Obama to grievance monger and demagogue Jesse Jackson, saying of Obama's victory over Hillary in South Carolina, "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88. And he ran a good campaign, and Senator Obama's run a good campaign here." Of course Bill Clinton won South Carolina in 1992, but somehow that comparison didn't spring to mind.