HERO BILL? – AT 8:14 A.M. ET:  When the term "political courage is used, the name Bill Clinton doesn't usually come to mind.  But the former prez is showing some real guts this week by campaigning for his former aide, Rahm Emanuel, who's running for mayor of Chicago:

Washington (CNN) - Former President Bill Clinton came to Chicago on Tuesday to give a strong endorsement to his one-time aide Rahm Emanuel, who is the frontrunner in a heated primary race to determine who will be the next mayor.

"You need a big person for the job. Now Rahm is not even six feet tall. He probably weighs about 150 pounds...but in all the ways that matters he is a very big person for this job," Clinton told a crowd of several hundred.

Clinton's campaigning took courage because the black establishment in Chicago, which is stuck in the 1960s, resented the former president's endorsement of a white candidate.

"Bill Clinton doesn't live or vote in Chicago. He's an outsider parachuting in to support another outsider. For Clinton to come to Chicago on the day after Dr. King's birthday to inset himself into the middle of a mayoral race with major black and Latino candidates is a betrayal of the people who were most loyal to him. It's a mistake," Renee Ferguson, a spokeswoman for Carol Moseley-Braun, told CNN.

Absolutely disgraceful.  I think Dr. King would have been appalled by a statement like that, using his name.  As for Rahm Emanuel being an "outsider," he is a former congressman from...Chicago.

Good on you, Bill Clinton.  And we don't say that here too often.

January 19, 2011