By James Rosen

Oh, grand times, they were, back in 1997, when the Clintons sailed off Cape Cod with their dear friends, the Kennedys.

But that was then, and this is now, and a life in politics affords no final victories and no permanent alliances.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has learned this painful lesson all over again this year: first in January, when Sen. Edward Kennedy, the liberal lion from Massachusetts, endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination; and then again last week, when Kennedy seemed to suggest — with words he later claimed were misconstrued — that Mrs. Clinton would not even be fit to serve as a running mate to Obama.

“I would hope,” Kennedy told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt on Friday, “that (Obama) would also give consideration to somebody that has — is in tune with his appeal for the nobler aspirations of the American people.”

Influential Democrats, including Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, promptly rebuked Kennedy for his remarks. But in the case of Emanuel, himself a former Clinton White House aide, the display of loyalty to Clinton was mitigated by the fact that it came almost in the same breath that Emanuel declared publicly: “Hillary can’t win.”

The contentious Democratic primary has made this a veritable season of betrayal. Party superdelegate and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew, named to the latter post by President Bill Clinton, defected to Obama shortly before the crucial Indiana primary.

In this, Andrew merely followed the lead of other fickle superdelegates. The first such turncoat was Georgia Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon who announced he was leaning toward Obama exactly 125 days after he had endorsed Clinton.

Longtime Clintonista James Carville, the flamboyant political consultant, hurled the Biblical term “Judas” at Bill Richardson when he, too, endorsed Obama — a decade after then-President Clinton appointed Richardson as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and afterward secretary of energy.

“I think that there were a lot of resentments built up during the eight years that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were in the White House,” said Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster who advised President Clinton throughout that time and has no role with the Obama or Clinton campaigns. “I think that what we’re seeing with some of the movement to Barack Obama is people feeling that they are now liberated to move beyond the Clintons and make new, fresh, and hopefully, from their point of view, more beneficial political ties.”

But it’s not all about the Clintons. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry also endorsed Obama in January, at a time when former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Kerry’s own running mate of four years earlier, was still in the race.

Nor is such treachery confined to the Democratic Party. In 1994, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani stunned GOP allies by endorsing Gov. Mario Cuomo, a Democrat, over Republican challenger George Pataki. Giuliani backed Pataki in the next two elections, but as The New York Times reported, “The bad feelings on both sides never really seemed to ease.”

One Republican strategist suggested his party is less prone to internal backstabbing.

“In the Republican Party, there’s a pecking order, and it’s very rare that somebody tries to jump the line,” Terry Holt, a national spokesman for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, told FOX News. “You know, we have our winner-take-all primaries. We like to have a very choreographed convention, no messy delegate fights.”

Holt said the Republicans’ greater inclination toward orderliness motivated the party to nominate Kansas Sen. Bob Dole to run against President Clinton in 1996 — even though party leaders knew he would make a weak candidate — because they perceived that it was Dole’s “turn” to be the party’s standard-bearer.

For Obama, now cresting a wave of unbridled party enthusiasm, it may be premature to advise him to beware the ides of March. But if his own experience is any guide, he might do well to remember “The Godfather,” and keep his friends close, and those endorsing him even closer.

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