Don't buy your wife flowers or candy, Sen. Hillary Clinton told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough this morning after he asked her advice for a still-unpurchased Mother's Day gift.
"Obviously, the old fallbacks of flowers and candy are just no good because you've already blown your cover on this nationwide broadcast. So jewelry, jewelry, Joe," she said during a call in to his show, laughing.
"He's a big TV personality and he's got two shows," she explained to another guest on the show. "I mean, you know, the flowers for him is -- you know, you could do flowers, plus."
"You were supposed to help me out and you've just made my life a lot more difficult," Scarborough whined to the New York Democrat.
Her preferred mom gift from Bill and Chelsea? "All I want is a day off," she said.
Clinton chatted about the war, health care and global warming, along with comparing a review of her past hairstyles to an "archeological dig."
But she also cribbed talking points from a current presidential rival and one who almost ran for the White House.
She said voters "are so anxious to turn the page," using a phrase Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has used on the stump recently.
Clinton went on to say the country needs to a "sensible center," one of the preferred stump lines for former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat who opted last fall not to seek the presidency. (However, Colin Powell coined the term years ago.)
But the show's kicker was when Scarborough, a former Republican Congressman, said he would take "part blame" for the "Clinton wars," lamenting how they started to create deep political divisions in the United States.
The two closed the show by trading apologies.
"I apologize for anything that I've ever said that may have been unkind about you or the president, and wasn't really serious about that whole impeachment thing. It was really guys who recommended that I do that," Scarborough said.
"And, Joe, I apologize to you if I got you in trouble for Mother's Day," she responded.
-- Christina Bellantoni, Capitol Hill correspondent, The Washington Times