The Discerning Texan
-- Edmund Burke
Friday, November 02, 2007
The Trouble with "Hill-Bill"
Cartoon by Henry Payne (click to enlarge)
Charles Krauthammer has a thoughtful--as always--column up today about the comparisons which recent election of a Leftist woman in Argentina to replace her Leftist husband as El Presidente has caused for the prospects of a Clinton co-presidency. Krauthammer thinks that the people who are trying to draw a comparison between this and Hillary running on her husband's coattails are missing the point entirely--the problem is not that he is a serial Sex Addict, the problem is that the Constitution clearly calls for just one President, not a familial Politburo. And aside from being the only President in modern time to be impeached, Bill also happens to be restricted from ever serving as President again by the 22nd Amendment:
Which is why Hillary's problem goes beyond discomfort with dynastic succession. It's deep unease about a shared presidency. Forget about Bill, the bad boy. The problem is William Jefferson Clinton, former president of the United States, commander in chief of the Armed Forces, George Washington's representative on earth.
We have never had an ex-president move back into the White House. When in 1992 Bill Clinton promised "two for the price of one," it was taken as a slightly hyperbolic promotion of the role of first lady. This time we would literally be getting two presidents.
Any ex-president is a presence in his own right. His stature, unlike, say, Hillary's during Bill's presidency, is independent of his spouse. From day one of Hillary's inauguration, Bill will have had more experience than her at everything she touches. His influence on her presidency would necessarily be immeasurably greater than that of any father on any son.
Americans did not like the idea of a co-presidency when, at the 1980 Republican convention, Ronald Reagan briefly considered sharing the office with former President Gerald Ford. (Ford would have been vice president with independent powers.) And they won't like this co-presidency, particularly because the Clinton partnership involves two characters caught in the dynamic of a strained, strange marriage.
The cloud hovering over a Hillary presidency is not Bill padding around the White House in robe and slippers flipping thongs. It's President Clinton, in suit and tie, simply present in the White House when any decision is made. The degree of his involvement in that decision will inevitably become an issue. Do Americans really want a historically unique two-headed presidency constantly buffeted by the dynamics of a highly dysfunctional marriage?
Read the whole thing. (h/t Glenn Reynolds).
If you really think about it, other than marrying him, what exactly has she ever accomplished (besides to get first the Rose law firm and later her husband knee deep into hot water with: shredding documents, Whitewater, insider cattle futures trading, travel office, and "lost and found" FBI files scandals...)? And these do not even include the money she is getting now--and not returning--from unemployed dishwashers in Chinatown via sugar daddy Norman Hsu, nor does it cover her curious adventure with Peter Paul in Hollywood. The only high profile task that Hillary ever really tried to accomplish--which was her first Socialized Medicine fiasco--went down in flames, and may have cost her husband the House of Representatives in 1994.
We don't live in Argentina, we live in the United States. And what we are really talking about here is returning the Clinton Crime Family--sleaze and all--to office. That should be reason enough to alarm any Republican who is even thinking of not helping out with next year's election cycle. This is one time when we all need to get involved. If we do not want the United States that we know and remember to become a distant memory, we have to stop this "coronation" from happening.
