The Clinton Albatross - Bill’s not exactly a fireman. He may instead throw gasoline on the fire.

National Review Online ^ | December 20, 2007 | Victor Davis Hanson

[neverdem]

December 20, 2007, 0:00 a.m.

The Clinton Albatross
Bill’s not exactly a fireman. He may instead throw gasoline on the fire.

By Victor Davis Hanson

If polls are accurate, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s once-sure bid for the Democratic presidential nomination is now not so sure. Her wide lead vanished without warning in Iowa and New Hampshire — and maybe elsewhere as well.

Was it due to her waffling on issues like the Iraq war and driver’s licenses for illegal aliens? Or was her campaign too smug — like that of similarly sputtering Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani — assuming she should be coronated by the polls and media rather than having to fight for the nomination tooth and nail?

Or is it just that her upbeat, confident rival, Barack Obama — with a little help from Oprah — is surging as he bests her in back-and-forth quips?

Hillary’s campaign is so stalled that her advisers have tried dredging up Obama’s kindergarten essays and his admitted drug use. And now they’re resorting to flying in Bill Clinton to save the day. Some polls and conventional wisdom suggest he may yet restore his wife’s fortunes.

But Bill’s not exactly a fireman. He may instead throw gasoline on the fire.

First, his vote-getting abilities are suspect. He never won 50 percent of the vote in a presidential election. That fact and the embarrassment of his impeachment were why Vice President Al Gore kept him away from his 2000 campaign. True, Bill’s presence is said to resonate with African-American voters, but most may prefer Obama anyway, as polls now show in South Carolina.

Second, Bill Clinton often comes across as a narcissist. He talks the longest and loudest about himself. It is almost impossible for first-person Bill to praise Hillary without adding, “When I was president” or “I had a vision.”

Third, Bill cannot always distinguish truth from fiction. In his rescue mission for Hillary, he has already weighed in on the Iraq war — in which he falsely claimed that he was against it from the very beginning.

Most recently, in a dig at Obama’s lack of experience, Bill claims that he nixed an earlier run for the presidency in 1988 because he saw that he wasn’t yet ready for the job. But the real reason more likely was worry about the less-than-desirable and now well-known aspects of his personal life. That tendency to dwell on — and fudge — his own past earns splashy headlines but takes attention away from his wife.

Fourth, Americans may not be comfortable with a spouse of an ex-president running for commander-in-chief. Alabama’s governor George Wallace once had his wife, Lurleen, run as his replacement when he was no longer eligible. Despite Lurleen’s victory, that staged succession seemed fishy — sort of like the current husband/wife switcheroo of former and current president Mr. and Mrs. Kirchner down in Argentina.

The Clintons need to tread carefully so that Hillary does not appear a mere bridge for Bill’s drive for a third term. When he steps in to talk nonstop in their co-defense, it appears that she’s not quite in full control of her own destiny.

If Hillary is elected president, will Bill likewise butt in when the Congress or foreign leaders are mean to his wife or her rankings tank? The last thing the would-be Democratic nominee wants is more “Bill Clinton Makes the Case for His Wife” headlines like we saw all last week.

Fifth, Hillary’s campaign can’t control Bill. Ex-presidents don’t exactly have small egos, and Clinton, something of a loose cannon, is bound to shoot his mouth off whenever and at whatever he pleases. He now brags that Hillary will send him out with George H. W. Bush to undo the damage of Bush Senior’s son, the current president.

And in a recent interview with talk-show host Charlie Rose, Bill embarrassingly gushed that Hillary “is so good.” Then he went on to trash Obama — while denying he was doing just that. No wonder that Hillary’s frantic campaign handlers were said to have been offstage trying to cut short the Rose interview.

Bill also claims that Hillary has already been “vetted” — hinting that Obama, in contrast, hasn’t been fully investigated and may well have more skeletons that someone may uncover. Yet part of Hillary’s current trouble is the public’s anger over her campaign’s past unsavory use of just that rhetorical trick: digging up dirt on opponents while claiming you’re not.

If Bill keeps this sloppiness up, some might almost wonder whether he really wants his wife to win — and thereby have her overshadow his own presidency by being both the first woman president and the Clinton who did not suffer impeachment due to self-inflicted scandal.

Hillary may yet end up the Democratic nominee. But only if she alone convinces America — and Wild Bill — that she’s running for her first, not his third, term.

© 2007 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

---

-

[InvisibleChurch]

btt

[N. Theknow]

Two very good things could come out of this election.

1. BJ Clinton can remind everyone of the Clinton mendacity and that the 90's were not neccessarily the good old days, in turn, (pun intended) he and HRC, Her Royal Cankleness, may wind up in the dustbin of history.

2. Obama having the light shined on him, which will go in one ear and out the other, might just drag The Oprah, The Big Zero, down with him.

[Bob]

The true legacy of Bill Clinton:

1) A tanking economy
2) A war that only one side was fighting (not us)
3) 100 dead Americans, incinerated in an armor attack in Texas

I usually break down your point #2 into a few items:

2a) Ignored first bombing of the WTC
2b) Ignored the bombings of two African embassies
2c) Ignored the bombing of Khobar Towers
2d) Ignored the bombing of the USS Cole
2e) Turned Mogodishu into a charlie-foxtrot with a disastrous outcome

And a few more items:

4) The 'repatriation' of Elian Gonzalez
5) His (unfortunately) unsuccessful impeachment

(There are probably a few more that I've forgotten as well.)

[CholeraJoe]

Most firemen I know are better hung and more courageous than the Bent One.

[txrangerette]

Good article.

And it doesn’t even mention the second worst Clinton gaffe of all (the first being his claim that he opposed the Iraq war all along) - his claim that President Hillary would send him and former President GHWB on a world trip to shore up support for the new government and disavow the George W Bush foreign policy.

Only to have Bush 41 issue a statement saying he’s very proud of his son’s foreign policy and had never even discussed such a thing with Bill Clinton.

Ouch...

[TomGuy]

Bill cannot always distinguish truth from fiction.

Hill has the same malady, what with the tale of her namesake Sir Edmund and her tale of Chelsea jogging Manhattan and, as the Twin Towers fell, stopped at a payphone to call Mother Hillary to complain that Bush's tax cuts caused the towers to fall.

[TomGuy]

Bill cannot always distinguish truth from fiction.

In fact, it seems many of the presidential wannabes from both parties suffer from the same maladay.

[TomGuy]

Bill also claims that Hillary has already been “vetted”

We saw that coming when Hillary was on her book tour. Some of us posted several years ago that, when she does run, she will claim she has already been vetted to quell the dirt-digging.

[rod1]

We need to get the mesage to Hill, Bill, Penn and Wolfie that she’s been vetted when FR says she’s been vetted....and not before.

[alwaysconservative]

I understand that at the recent event with Magic Johnson and Bill, Hillary was almost an afterthought. And I share VDH’s suspicions whether Bill really wants Hillary to win. Her “legacy” would immediately outstrip and dwarf his simply on identity grounds alone, before she accomplished one single thing.

His not-so-helpful public comments about her divulging how she “whined” about how hard campaigning was, claiming that it would be a “miracle” if she wins Iowa, and rabidly unintellectual defense of her on gender grounds, do not make for what I (or other normal people) would consider “support”. This is truly a bizarre relationship, and I would feel sorry for her that Bill is the best she can do, except that she poses such a grave threat to the concept of liberty and the continuity of the American dream that there is no room for sentimentality or misplaced sympathy.

[alwaysconservative]

I agree that there is no need for cariacature; simply putting up her own record (and reminding people of the records she refuses to divulge) should be enough to remind people why these two should never be let near the White House again.

Someone pointed out that Hillary’s own Christmas commercial about giving the “gifts” of all her failed ideas and programs could be a devastating negative ad if run by the pubbies if they added just one line at the end: “Wouldn’t it be nice if the gifts she decided to buy weren’t bought with someone else’s money?” LOLOL!

[RipSawyer]

Most firemen I know are better hung and more courageous than the Bent One.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The firemen I know are real men, Bill Clinton is still a boy.

[libs_kma]

"Hill has the same malady, what with the tale of her namesake Sir Edmund and her tale of Chelsea jogging Manhattan and, as the Twin Towers fell, stopped at a payphone to call Mother Hillary to complain that Bush's tax cuts caused the towers to fall."

Not to mention when the Beast went to join the Marines....thats classic Beast right there.

She learned to lie about the absolutely stupid stuff from the slickmeister "I-thought-it-was-time-I-go-sit-in-the-back-of-the-bus" himself.

Klintoons are beyond disgusting.

[hillarynot]

Two comments:

I’m also convinced he is trying to sabotage her candidacy. His ego couldn’t take being second fiddle(r).

It also amazes me that Clinton lovers continue to claim how great the stock market was during his administration and ignore the fact that the stock market bubble burst in April 2000 (7 months before the election). The technology bubble was partially due to Y2k hype and had nothing to do with Clinton. He balanced the budget by decimating the military.

[kabar]

It is interesting that the Clintons stress Hillary’s “experience,” but they only use it against Obama. Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, and Biden have far more experience than Hillary. So by that criterion, she is inexperienced.

[DuncanWaring]

He balanced the budget by decimating the military.

Actually, he never balanced the budget. The National Debt has increased every single year for the last fifty years - since the middle of the Eisenhower administration.

The Feds nearly broke even with the fiscal year ending Sept 2000, but even in that year were still roughly $20 billion in the hole.

[Sig Sauer P220]

If Hillary had been properly “vetted”, she’d be wearing an orange jumpsuit at Leavenworth right now.