Bill Clinton poses a serious problem for his wife Hillary’s presidential candidacy. More important, the Clinton’s ill-starred power-sharing arrangement will become a significant problem for America should Hillary gain the presidency. The Clintons’ Sunday appearance at Tom Harkin’s Iowa steak fry signaled more than the unofficial kickoff of Hillary’s presidential campaign. It was also the de facto announcement of a second Clinton co-presidency-in-waiting.
Saturday’s Washington Post featured a front-page above-the-fold article on Hillary’s return to Iowa. It purported to analyze the reasons for her devastating loss there in 2008, yet there was no mention of the specter of a Clinton co-presidency and the damage this did six years ago. We’ve largely forgotten how big a stumbling block this issue was for Hillary’s first national campaign.
Bill did his best to stay out of the limelight in 2007, until Hillary ran into trouble during the early going in Iowa. At first, Bill’s attempts to shore up her position with personal appearances helped. Many Democrats actually yearned for a Clinton co-presidency and even supported Hillary largely because of Bill. In time, however, Bill began to overshadow Hillary, raising questions about her independence and how the two might govern as a couple in the White House.
The trouble began during a joint appearance at an Iowa grocery store in December of 2007, when Bill drew away all the press attention, leaving Hillary alone and confused. That became the story, and soon prompted a broader discussion of the co-presidential problem, even among liberals. Here are some excerpts from a Eugene Robinson column in The Washington Post after the incident:
[Hillary] realized that Bill had departed from the script and wandered off to another part of the store, and cameras caught her scanning the aisles with a look of sheer terror…He ended up drawing more attention to himself than the candidate—which is in keeping with his formal campaign speeches… He talks more about himself than about his wife—at a ratio of about 9 to 1…The episode shows what Hillary Clinton might face in the White House…Is Bill Clinton capable of following any script? Since the Constitution provides for one president, not two, could he find a way to live in the White House that wasn’t all about him?
Now have a look at the account of the Clintons’ appearance at Harkin’s Iowa steak fry in today’s New York Times:
But as is often the case wherever Mr. Clinton goes, what amounted to the unofficial start of the next Iowa presidential caucuses was as much about the Clinton who already served as president as the one who appears to have designs on the office…The Harkins sought to make it clear that, while the Clintons were co-headliners, it was Mrs. Clinton who was to be the focal point…Yet for all the effort to shine a rhetorical light on Mrs. Clinton, it was Mr. Clinton who seemed most happy to be back on the grand stage of presidential politics.
There is more along these lines in the article. For a full-scale analysis of the Clintons’ co-presidential problem, consult my new piece on the topic for the Claremont Review of Books. Hillary’s Bill problem isn’t going away, and it can’t be fixed.
We’ve taken the phenomenon of “the Clintons” for granted. That is a mistake. There’s a reason the Founders soundly rejected the idea of a “plural executive.” The first Clinton co-presidency was a fiasco, and there’s every reason to believe that a second Clinton co-presidency would be just as much of a problem, if not more so. Yet that is where we are headed, should Hillary take the prize.