File this one under "Bill Clinton just can't let go." I'm really beginning to resent him for being such a sore loser.

Bill Clinton refuses to say Barack Obama is 'ready' for White House

BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Even after his wife has dropped out of the presidential race, Bill Clinton has had only tepid praise for Barack Obama.
WASHINGTON - Bill Clinton regrets some things he said - and didn't say - on the campaign trail. But there's one thing he still can't utter: Barack Obama is ready to be President.

"You can argue that nobody is ready to be President," the former President told ABC News.

"You can argue that even if you've been vice president for eight years, that no one can be fully ready for the pressures of the office," Clinton said Monday during a visit to Rwanda. That's probably not what Team Obama wanted to hear from the former commander in chief, whose role in Obama's election push and at the Democratic National Convention remains in flux.

Team Obama has said Clinton will be an asset, but so far he and the Illinois senator have spoken only once, by phone, since the primaries ended - a fact that has peeved some Obama supporters.

Bubba's backers concede his unwillingness to say his party's nominee is ready to sit in the Oval Office was a faux pas.

"The political answer is to just say, 'Yes,' period," said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane. "But as a former President, he has a special perspective on what it takes."

Clinton couldn't just say the political thing, Lehane added, because he's still smarting from Hillary Clinton's bitter defeat.

"This is someone whose spouse was on the ticket, a person he felt tremendously strong about, who he felt had the ability to become President," Lehane said.

Clinton and his wife argued in nearly every speech that she was ready tobe President on day one.

Bubba did praise some of the very same traits he ripped in the primaries - including Obama's ability to lead through inspiring words, which he trashed as empty rhetoric on the campaign trail.

"He clearly can inspire and motivate people and energize them, which is a very important part of being President," Clinton said. "And he's smart as a whip so there's nothing he can't learn."

Clinton repeatedly became a distraction for his wife's campaign, and many Obama supporters felt he and Hillary were racially insensitive.

In spite of Clinton's lackluster endorsement Monday, Team Obama will take it. "He and Sen. Clinton are tremendous assets," spokesman Bill Burton said.

Bubba said he wished he could have a few of his words back. "There are things that I wished I urged her to do, things I wished I said, things I wished I hadn't said," Clinton said. But he defended his record on race. "I am not a racist - I never made a racist comment and I didn't attack him personally," Clinton said.

Clinton, caught in numerous finger-wagging outbursts in the campaign, insisted he's not angry at Obama. "I think everybody's got a right to run for President who qualifies under the Constitution," Clinton said. "I'd be the last person to begrudge anybody their ambition."