With the 2008 presidential campaign just barely begun, it’s entirely fitting that, already, things are getting nasty. While some (yours truly included) are waiting for a Lewinsky-size scandal to rock American politics and finally wake the nation up to something called the government and its workings, for now we’ll have to settle with yet another irritating billionaire stirring things up—in this case movie and music maverick David Geffen.

Geffen recently managed to piss off the Clintons (good idea!) with a series of inflammatory quotes. A former supporter of the Clintons, he claimed, “Everybody in politics lies, but when they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.” In his inexplainable rant he goes on to explain,

Not since the Vietnam War has there been this level of disappointment in the behavior of America throughout the world, and I don’t think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is—and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton?—can bring the country together.

To top it off he calls it “typical of Hillary” to not admit she made a mistake on the Iraq war. Sparing none of his choice words for other candidates, he also takes aim at Bill, calling him a “reckless guy [who] gave his enemies a lot of ammunition to hurt him and to distract the country.” Clearly, someone is still bitter that Clinton didn’t grant convicted murderer Leonard Peltier a pardon in 2001…

The drama didn’t end with Geffen’s tossed-off comments, though. As a result of the name-calling, Hillary’s camp has demanded that Barack Obama return the large amount of money that Geffen has so far raised for the campaign. In the name of the “new kind of politics” that Obama is supposedly promoting in this presidential race, the Clinton campaign is waiting for Obama to renounce Geffen’s comments and cut ties with him. Alas, things are not so easy for the first woman to really have a chance at the presidency. Obama’s spokesperson David Axelrod came up with a brilliant, completely non-mud-slinging response. Axelrod points out,

It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when [he] was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom. It is also ironic that Sen. Clinton lavished praise on Monday and is fully willing to accept today the support of South Carolina state Sen. Robert Ford, who said if Barack Obama were to win the nomination, he would drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because “he’s black.”

Devoid of any sarcasm or insinuation against Hillary’s character, his response characterizes the Obama campaign’s already crystal-clear committment to his new brand of politics. In other words, while Obama would like to avoid mud-slinging, his supporters and campaign staff aren’t having it and are throwing insults for him.

In any case, it looks like the 2008 political race is officially on! Let the games begin.