Obama Aide Says Bill Clinton like McCarthy

Guide Note: Tony McPeak, co-chair of Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign, compared former president Bill Clinton to Joseph McCarthy. McPeak's comparison came in light of comments that Clinton made about the general election on Friday, March 21, 2008, when he was talking to veterans in Charlotte, North Carolina. According to MSNBC, Clinton said that a race between his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain would be a race between "two people who loved this country" and would be free of "all of this other stuff that seems to intrude itself on our politics."

According to the AP report: McPeak said, "I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I've had enough of it."

According to the AP report, Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer responded to McPeak's comments as follows: "To liken these comments to McCarthyism is absurd."

The New York Times reports that neither Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama have personally commented on the exchange.

Fast Facts:

1. Name: General Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak
2. Co-chair of Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign
3. Compared former president Bill Clinton to Senator Joseph McCarthy on Friday, March 20, 2008
4. McPeak is a retired Air Force general
5. Joseph McCarthy is notorious for hunting communists in the 1950s
6. Phil Singer, spokesman for the Clinton presidential campaign calls this comparison "absurd"