Print
Email
Share
The Clintons want to party like it’s 1992.
Back at the dawn of their excellent adventure, Hillary would tell voters that she and her husband were a package deal, two for the price of one. And when they found themselves under attack - thanks to his military draft avoidance and bimbo eruptions - they hunkered in their bunker (“the war room,” as Hillary dubbed it) and toughed it out together.
Even though the roles are reversed this time - with Bill angling for the job of First Gentleman - the deal is basically the same. They’re offering eight more years of the Clinton family brand, and all the potential baggage that goes with it. Bill in particular is both asset and albatross, and both spouses are magnets for partisan flak (even from disillusioned comrades, such as liberal Hollywood mogul David Geffen). Which means that Hillary’s only option is to try to sell all this tumult as a good thing. The success of her candidacy may well hinge on her powers of persuasion.
On the stump in early primary states, she says of the Republicans: “I’m the only person they’re most afraid of, because Bill and I know how to beat them, and we have consistently. ... I know how to fight back.” When she floats that argument, virtually touting the virtues of rapid response, I hear uneasy applause. She is essentially promising eight more years of polarized politics in Washington.
But I sense that many Democrats aren’t necessarily sold on the idea of extending the war-room ethos into 2016, and that creates a potential opening for a rival (perhaps Sen. Barack Obama) savvy enough to suggest, without getting personal, that Clinton fatigue should remain a malady of the late ‘90s.
Amid all the talk about the potential milestones in the ‘08 race - the first major female candidate, the first major black candidate - we often overlook the historic Bill factor. Never before has an ex-president auditioned for the role of White House spouse. This is a complicating factor that delights the many Democrats who associate Bill with the pre-9/11 peace-and-prosperity era. But a sizable share of Democrats yearn to turn the page. I hear that some Democrats only half-jokingly liken Bill to The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave, a John Belushi character on “Saturday Night Live” who parked himself on people’s sofas, stayed all night, and ate everything in sight.
The significance of David Geffen’s outburst - 11 days ago, he called the Clintons nimble liars who don’t stand for anything, and he implied that Bill is still catting around - is that he said in public what a lot of Democrats mutter in private. One party strategist, who does not work for Hillary, told me that she would like to put Bill “in a cage somewhere, with a blanket thrown over it.” These Democrats fret that Hillary’s tepid poll ratings (in the latest ABC News-Washington Post survey, 48 percent of Americans view her unfavorably) are partly attributable to public concerns about another package deal.
Those concerns may well persist, because nobody knows the terms of the deal. Would Bill function as First Adviser? Would he agree not to upstage her, by staying out of the limelight that he loves? Would she agree not to make decisions that would benefit his global initiatives? Would she risk her presidential standing to defend him again if he does something to embarrass her? The terms of the deal are inextricably tied to the nuances of their personal relationship, and even those who know the relationship won’t talk about it. As a Hillary adviser recently told an inquiring Newsweek reporter, “If that’s what you want to talk about, I’m hanging up right now.”
Team Hillary’s rapid response to Geffen also serves as a warning to all who might seek in the future to criticize the Clintons, or simply raise questions. The Hillary camp assailed Geffen’s remarks as epitomizing “the politics of personal destruction” and demanded that Obama denounce Geffen and return the money Geffen had just raised for his campaign. In essence, Hillary was spreading the word that she deems all criticism of the Clinton couple to be off-limits in this presidential campaign. That’s a pretty broad decree, and nervy as well; presumably, it means that Obama would be practicing the politics of personal destruction if he again contends (as he did last October) that Bill is “trapped by his own biography.”
Hillary’s concern is understandable, up to a point. Some of the usual suspects on the right are reportedly gearing up for a fresh round of Bill-and-Hillary-bashing, aided this time by Dick Morris, the ex-Clinton pollster dumped by the First Couple in 1996 when he was found to be cavorting with a hooker.
And the cable-TV shout-fests are thirsting for raw meat; witness this series of questions and comments from Chris Matthews a few weeks ago, as he queried Hillary aide Ann Lewis: “Is Bill Clinton going to be a problem in this campaign? ... Is he going to behave himself? ... Is he going to behave himself? ... Is he going to behave himself, not cause a publicity that gets her embarrassed? ... So he’s going to behave himself. ... I think it’d be great for the country if we were not once again distracted. ...”
But it’s Hillary who has put the Clintons in play. She typically praises her husband’s presidency, and her campaign has coached Hillary fans to deliver the same message to skeptics and inquiring reporters; for instance, in a February memo, supporters in Iowa were told to say this: “A lot of Americans will gladly take the eight great years of economic prosperity and peace that the Clinton administration delivered.”
In other words, Hillary herself has made Bill fair game. It strains credulity to think that she can police the campaign discourse, that she can publicly extol his positives without taking heat from rivals and critics about his negatives. Nor does her censorious stance benefit her image, since she is already widely viewed, perhaps unfairly, as a humorless control freak.
As Democratic-friendly blogger Mickey Kaus said the other day on his Slate-sponsored site, “Enforcing taboos doesn’t work like it used to” before the invention of the Internet. “Today, if people have things to say, they’re going to say them. If the candidates don’t say them, and the (mainstream media don’t) say them, that doesn’t mean they won’t get said. ... (Hillary’s) fellow Democrats are tolerant, but they wonder what the deal (with her husband) is. That isn’t the `politics of personal destruction.’ It’s due diligence.”
Hillary would prefer that Bill work his political wiles behind the scenes; indeed, he has been tapped by her team to host a series of small, private events with elite donors, feeling their pain for six-figure gain. But she won’t be able to control the story, because Geffen has given voice to those in her party who still feel fatigued by the late ‘90s - including Marty Peretz, longtime Democratic activist and proprietor (until recently) of The New Republic magazine, who wrote the other day: “I believe that deep down the country agrees with Geffen. It does not want to relive the Clinton years.”
There are still a lot of Democrats who remember how they were compelled to defend Bill’s lies during the Lewinsky affair; who remember that he had promised to run “the most ethical administration in history”; who remember how he left office by pardoning a rich tax felon who had donated generously to Clinton causes and whose ex-wife happened to be one of Hillary’s pals. These Democrats have no interest in another package deal, or a Clinton family dynasty. They have wanted to fight the Clintons for a long time. Hillary can win this fight, but she cannot suppress it.
___
ABOUT THE WRITER
Dick Polman is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to him at dpolman at phillynews.com or see his blog at http://go.philly.com/polman.
