Shrum on Edwards on Gays: ' I'm not comfortable around those people'

[Regis Philbin]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052301499_pf.html

Former Aide Takes Shots at Edwards

By Politics
Thursday, May 24, 2007; A09

Robert Shrum, the veteran Democratic strategist who worked on John Edwards's 1998 Senate campaign in North Carolina, does not remember his onetime client very fondly.

In his new memoir, "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner," Shrum recalls asking Edwards at the outset of that campaign, "What is your position, Mr. Edwards, on gay rights?"

"I'm not comfortable around those people," Edwards replied, according to Shrum. He writes that the candidate's wife, Elizabeth, told him: "John, you know that's wrong."

Edwards's pollster, Harrison Hickman, who was in the room during the discussion, says Shrum "is sensationalizing and taking out of context what was an honest discussion about [Edwards's] lack of exposure to these issues and openly gay people. I don't remember anything that expressed any kind of venom or judgment about gay people."

Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz says Shrum "has a very casual relationship with the truth. Bob is obviously more interested in selling books than reporting honestly and accurately about what happened."

While praising Edwards as a man of "many innate political gifts," Shrum says he hoped the senator wouldn't run for the White House in 2004: "I was coming to believe he wasn't ready; he was a Clinton who hadn't read the books."

[LesterX]

Once again, a misleading headline. This is a second-hand quote from a guy selling a book and not verified in any way.

Of course if it's accurate, I'm sure it makes you like Edwards more since you're a rabid homophobe.

[Annoyedlistner]

The only thing Regis does on this board is slander...

Yet again I ask you back something up with cold hard facts....

[SparkleHugs]

Yet again you will be left hanging with your questions unanswered.

[Regis Philbin]

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0507/Clintons_Advice.html

Clinton's Advice

Bob Shrum's book has already caused its share of trouble for John Edwards, in part from Shrum's recollection that Edwards wasn't comfortable with gay people in 1998.

But the book is really sort of a pile of unexploded ordnance, and the person who comes off as most indifferent to questions of gay rights isn't Edwards, but Bill Clinton.

A version of this story is already in print. In 2004, Newsweek reported, without a named source, that Bill Clinton had suggested Kerry "to back local bans on gay marriage."

Shrum has more, and different, detail:

"Clinton, Kerry reported at the time, did suggest blunting Bush's appeal to cultural conservatives with a reprise of Clinton's Sister Souljah moment in 1992 when he'd denounced her call for violence against whites — and done it as conspicuously as possible in front of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.

"Kerry, Clinton ventured, should consider defying Democratic interest groups by endorsing the Bush proposal for a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage."

Shrum reports that "this was a flip-flop too far for Kerry."

It's also worse in Shrum's version — the federal amendment, versus state amendments -- than in Newsweek's telling. And Bill Clinton does, reportedly, continue to play a small role in Hillary's campaign.