Bill Unbound
I've thought for a long time, as I wrote here, that Hillary Clinton is unlikely ever to be President, largely because lots of uncommitted voters will recoil at the idea of sending Bill back to the White House for something like a third term. Not because they dislike Bill, but because it's just too strange.
But I always thought that Bill would play a subdued role in Hillary's campaign and that the issue of his role, should she win, would be a subtle one that would occur to voters in the later stages of the campaign, as they focus seriously on what it would mean for Hillary to be President. Obviously, I misjudged the Clintons' capacity for restraint. That is, I assumed they had some.
Already, Bill has become the unguided missile of Hillary's campaign, appearing in state after state, taking the lead in attacking Hillary's main rival, and often driving Hillary out of the headlines with his own irrepressible zest for political combat. The New York Times, no enemy of the Clintons, finds it a bit odd:
Facing formidable support for Senator Barack Obama in South Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is deploying former President Bill Clinton there while she shifts her attention to campaigning in states with nominating contests next month and to raising money.The strategic shift intensifies a new dynamic in the race: Mrs. Clinton’s campaign this week in South Carolina is essentially running Mr. Clinton against Mr. Obama.
This strikes me as a terrible idea. Bill Clinton is revered by many Democrats, and no doubt he is an effective surrogate in the way that candidates' spouses often are, only more so. But when Bill is seen as doing the heavy lifting for Hillary's campaign by battling with her opponent, and when he postures himself as his wife's protector and defender, he undermines Hillary's candidacy in a way that no political foe ever could. Moreover, by playing such a prominent role in Hillary's campaign, he inevitably prompts many to wonder: if he is so important to the campaign, what will his role be if she gets elected? His constant presence on the campaign trail reminds voters that he, not Hillary, is the dominant Clinton. That's a fact that won't change even if she is, at least nominally, the President.
It's a strange situation, one that for obvious reasons has no precedent in our political history. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see how it plays out. In my view, it can't be a good thing for Hillary that voters have ten months to contemplate the idea of returning Bill Clinton to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
UPDATE: Reuters makes some of the same points in "'Two against one' in Clintons' vs Obama campaign":
In 1992 Bill Clinton vowed Americans would get "two for the price of one" if they elected him with wife Hillary at his side. Now it is two against one as the Clintons gang up on Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential race. ***Bill Clinton's attacking role has gotten many political experts wondering whether New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's reliance on her husband will sooner or later backfire on her in her drive to become the first woman U.S. president.
"Clinton's current role confirms my ongoing reservations about whether the nation can deal with two presidents in the White House -- one of them elected and the other retired," said Linda Fowler, a professor of government at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
