The probability of a second dose of Clintonism into the sandstone veins of the White House seems to depend on whom you ask.
Some remember the days of that first dose fondly: a surging economy, a distinctive lack of U.S. boots on the ground and a president who everybody, Republican or Democrat, seemed to like—or at least tolerate. (Remember, Clinton was once quoted as saying that they were “Eisenhower Republicans” running against “Regan Republicans.”)
To me, those days call up words and phrases like Marc Rich, Whitewater, untraceable foreign money and Juanita Broaddrick.
Let’s forget those disgraces among many, for the present. Let’s forget the disgusting conduct of the then-president in regards to women, treating them as “dolls” to be used and thrown out onto the curb after he was done with them. Let’s forget his bombing of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, effectively killing uncountable thousands of Sudanese citizens who depended on that medicine to continue living.
Let it all go, because now his wife, who during the those fabled years was practically co-Vice President alongside Al Gore, is running for the top spot herself.
Since then she has done her time, withstood the slings and arrows that came with supporting the Iraq War at the outset and overcame the impossible trouncing Obama gave her in 2008 primaries. She has weathered the most covered public infidelity in history with the appearance of grace and temperance turned exasperation.
Surely, it is her turn.
But what, exactly, could that mean when she is stapled to someone as monomaniacal and well known as Bill Clinton?
It is hard to say. What I believe is that come 2016, for the first time in American history, the U.S. will have the option to vote for three people on a single ticket, two presidents and a whipping-boy, a two-headed duumvirate forged in the 1960’s with one simple goal: to become the head of the most powerful nation on earth for a combined 16 years.
Hear me out: the horde of Clinton-loyal underlings, kept in their office cages working slavishly for readmission to the Big House these past 20 years, will be let loose to take control of their old menial posts.
For so long, the word of Bill, the preeminent political guru, was immutable law and it seems to me highly unlikely that this almost Pavlovian tick to follow his line will suddenly flit off into thin air once his wife assumes the throne.
Like no other presidential spouse in history, his opinion on all issues will be just as weighty as his wife’s, both to her administration and to the public. Because the couple’s political stakes are entangled with one another, each will support the policies of the other without question.
Do you think, in a new Clinton White House, that Hillary, in the commencement of her duties, will be able to ignore her husband’s council on matters of extreme national importance? As executive, her job is to act as her best judgment tells her, sometimes acting in spite of the mutterings of her advisors and spouse.
Additionally, any infighting, perceived or real, will turn up a rash of Clinton-relationship media; a time-tested method to sell print copy, and an outcome that they will do anything to avoid. The two heads will speak with a single voice, masculine and feminine, one old and one new, to determine the future of the nation.
So where will her prospective administration’s policies truly originate, the elected commander-in-chief or her spouse? Or both? Nobody can say for sure.
But if what allegedly happened to the now-forgotten Broadderick is any indication, Bill Clinton seems to be the kind of man who gets what he wants, elected or not.