When Clinton was Governor of Ark., he spent a ton of time over the river in Memphis with the Ford family. Jr. cut his teeth on Clinton.
What will be interesting to watch is how Clinton manages to spin this today while in TN. If he does at all.... or just manages to deftly avoid talking about it. You know - the usual Clinton-esque behavior.
I didn't know that - but it makes sense. My view of Clinton is that there was a period of time in his adolescence where he must have been watching film of John F. Kennedy at his press conferences like a football coach running game films, over and over again. Clinton absorbed the affectations and cadence, and some of the mannerisms of JFK - to the point of believing he was part of the family (witness him horning in during the sailing trip at Hyannis Port during the early days of his presidency). He had enough intelligence to put a nice gloss on it - but in the results of his administration you can see that Clinton is a highly defective person. Certainly no leader. Slick, but not someone who should be entrusted with power.
Ford hits me in exactly the same place. He has that kind of Tavis Smiley slickness that doesn't quite fool you, but convinces a lot of people.
I note that Ford is a U of Michigan Law School graduate and that he failed the Tennessee Bar the one time he took it. I'd like to see some statistics on U of M Law grads and their bar pass rate (either class of '96, all classes, average over past decade, etc.) It seems to me that he is a rarity in that failure, and that is may lend credence to the idea that he was either a celebrity, legacy, or affirmative action acceptance.
I expect to see him lose by about 1.5 pts. I'll spit up a lot more than coffee if he beats Corker. The lesson of Clinton is that opportunistic, narcissistic personalities like Clinton should be figuratively killed at birth within the world of politics. If Ross Perot hadn't entered the race in 1992, Clinton would be a long winded, hard to remember lawyer from Arkansas. That kind of mistake should not be repeated in giving Ford a step up in his career.