Campaign Issues

DENVER, CO - In a conciliatory gesture to his opponent, Senator Obama today reached out to Senator Clinton by offering her the cabinet position of “Secretary of Sewing,” which he said he created “just for Hillary.”

Although bypassing her for the number two spot on the ticket, Senator Obama said he nevertheless values Sen. Clinton’s experience and she would be a “welcome addition to anybody’s cabinet.”

Obama said that he created the new post after hearing an impassioned Chelsea Clinton relate the story of how her mother would stay up at night, sewing patches onto her Girl Scout uniform. “Sewing has always been an integral part of American culture,” he said, “from the time Betsy Ross stitched together the first America flag from scraps of blood-tainted cloth ripped from the soiled shirts of slaves, to astronaut Lisa Nowak, an American hero who sewed a space-diaper to her panties so she could drive across country to stalk her rival without stopping to relieve herself.”

In her harshest rebuff yet to any statement from Senator Obama, Clinton called the offer “crass and insulting.”

“Now, who’s being elitist?” responded Obama. “Hard-working women all across this country toil tirelessly to sew and knit for their families. I find it revealing that Senator Clinton holds the tradition in such contempt.”

In a letter to the New York Times, Obama confirmed that he was sincere about the offer, stating that Senator Clinton should consider it her “last best chance” to be anywhere near the White House in the next four years, and describing the historic significance this would have for the nation.

“It shows the strength and greatness of our country,” he wrote, “where in 2008, a black man can be Commander-in-Chief and a woman can be the mouth of the sewer.”