In ABC interview Hillary Clinton clarifies statements in her book about Sarah Palin. Update!

Courtesy of ABC News:  

Hillary Clinton elaborated today on why she rebuffed the Obama campaign’s request that she attack Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential race to blunt Palin’s appeal to women. 

Clinton made her comments in an exclusive interview this morning on Good Morning America with ABC’s Robin Roberts after Palin cited Clinton’s new book “Hard Choices” to suggest it was the Democrats “who fired the 1st shot in the real ‘war on women.’” 

Clinton admitted she was asked by the Obama campaign to “go out and criticize” Palin when she was selected as John McCain’s running mate during the 2008 campaign, but she said, “‘For what? For being a woman? No let’s wait until we know where she stands. I don’t know anything about her, do you know anything about her?’ And nobody of course did.” 

“I think it’s fair to say that I made it clear I’m not going to go attack somebody for being a woman or a man. I’m going to try and look at the issues, where they stand, what their experience is, what they intend to do and then that’s fair game,” Clinton said. 

In responding to Palin’s tweet she tried to clarify saying, “That’s not exactly what I said.”

The first thing that should be pointed out is that the idea that Hillary would attack Palin for being a woman seems to have come from Hillary herself, and NOT the Obama campaign who were simply looking for a female face to counteract the buzz that was created by Palin's addition to the GOP ticket.

In fact in the book she explains what motivated the Obama administration to ask her: 

The 2008 presidential candidate writes in the book that, 'The Obama campaign suspected that her nomination was a blatant attempt to scuttle their hope of welcoming the women who had vigorously supported me. They immediately issued a dismissive statement and reached out to me in hopes I would follow suit.' 

'But I wouldn't. I was not going to attack Palin just for being a woman appealing for support from other women. I didn't think it made political sense, and it didn't feel right. So I said no...''

Second it appears that Hillary was very sensitive about perceived sexism within the 2008 Obama campaign, which I actually don't remember but perhaps I missed some things that Hillary picked up on. (To be fair there were a few racist remarks coming out of Bill Clinton in those days as well.) In fact it appears that she is still very sensitive about what happened in 2008, and despite the fact that they seemed to have buried the hatchet there is clearly some residual animus.

Perhaps that explains to some degree why Hillary is providing Palin with this new ammunition that I can guarantee is being written into some long winded ghostwritten Facebook post as we speak.

Update: A former senior Obama Campaign official has offered some very important context:

 A senior Obama campaign official said that the request for Clinton to speak was tailored specifically to Palin’s speech after McCain picked her as his running mate, in which she made a direct pitch for Clinton supporters. 

“Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all,” Palin said at the time. 

“We wanted Hillary to go out and say the Republican platform is completely inconsistent with the principles on which I ran,” said the official, adding that it was not supposed to be a broad-based knock on Palin. 

Now see that makes perfect sense, and it seems much more inline with how I remember that the Obama campaign handled things. 

My question is why did Hillary not explain it accurately, and leave it up to others to put things in perspective?

She is smart enough to know better.