-by Daureen MowdWhat is Bill Clinton so angry about? Let’s take stock:
• rising from humble origins to the world’s most-powerful position,• continuing to have global prestige and influence,• penetrating deeply into high income and wealth, and• being married to an extremely smart, accomplished and widely admired woman-- Aha!
Bill is angry about the speed bumps hit by Hillary’s Presidential campaign. But Bill knows that:
• Presidential campaigns have their ups and downs-- and are often lost,• coolness is more effective than anger in reacting to the downs,• becoming President requires much conflation of timing, luck and persistence, and• the life of a global political celebrity is actually nicer than being President.
David Axelrod concealed more than he revealed when he said that counter-productive anger pours out of Bill, despite his “incomparable genius, …because he loves his wife and because he believes she is the best candidate in the race.”Axelrod knows-- and we all know-- the following:Bill has enormous debts to Hillary.
• Hillary saved Bill’s first campaign for the Presidency by saying whatever was necessary to push back, at the most crucial early stage of the 1992 primary season, against Bill’s first national "bimbo eruption."• Later, Hillary standing by Bill throughout the Republican-driven prosecution of serial scandals, may have staved off Bill’s impeachment, as they morphed from "old news" into "denied but proven sex in White House with barely legal intern."
Who else has debts to Hillary?
• There is a long line of people who have wronged Hillary.• Hillary and Bill reached out to welcome, back into the fold of reasonable opinion, the Hillary-vilifying vast right conspirators Richard Scaife and Rupert Murdoch.• As a Senator, Hillary bonded over prayers with piety-over-humanism fanatics who had previously vilified her.
Bill’s example: Bill seems to have taught destructive lessons to many:
• To Wasserman Schultz, assholes like Emanuel, and nice guys like Van Hollen, that money is everything.• To Weiner, that chasing young women is fine, even right after your honeymoon with a wife who is smart, accomplished and beautiful (as was First Lady Hillary-- clearly what drives these compulsive dickheads is something much darker than wanting sex with attractive women).• Bill’s broadest lessons seem to have been taught to Hillary-- that no choices need to be made. One can: harvest money from the rich while harvesting votes from the poor; be a friend both of Wall Street and of the people ripped off by bankers; be an intimate of both Dubya and the Congressional Black Caucus; be a Moderate and a Progressive; be Annie Oakley and Gabby Giffords; make decisions as Secretary of State while beneficiaries of those decisions give big bucks to the family foundation.
Bill’s grown-up identity is obviously important to him, as a VIP ex-President, as a man of wealth, and as a man who pays his debts to his wife.Promises to the Public:
• When Bill vowed to Hillary that he would zip it up for eight years in return for her standing by him on the campaign trail, we were all relying on those vows.• Their offer to us of “two-for-price-of-one” turned their marriage into a menage-a-trois with the public.• Hillary’s trust in Bill encouraged the electorate to trust him.
Betrayals and Harm:
• Bill’s betrayals of Hillary did not cause nearly as much harm as his betrayal of the public.• He made Democrats slide down a slippery slope that started with our fearing and hating Republicans like Kenneth Starr, and led us to accepting references to "$5 bills in trailer parks," and the "narcissistic loony toon" personality of a reluctantly public 22 year-old girl.• Our cynical-looking slide excused, enraged and empowered a generation of ostentatiously and hypocritically pious busybodies who reveled in the apparent proof of all their worst suspicions about liberal values and policies.• Don’t tell me that Republican vilification of President Obama would be so sexualized without Bill having proven that even the crudest sexual adventures in the White House are all-to-imaginable.• Bill expended all his political capital on resisting impeachment, and had none left to resist Republican priorities in policies like Welfare "Reform."• Bill’s credibility with the military was so low that Colin Powell, who spent his entire career following even the most troubling orders, broke this pattern to publicly resist gender preference reform in the military, and decided that his concern for “personal responsibility” required him to become a Republican.
Who else is owed by Bill?
• While "moderates" like Joe Lieberman (see: ostentatiously and hypocritically pious busybodies) were building national profiles by distancing themselves from Bill, it was Progressives and especially African Americans who stood up for him.• This was ostentatiously symbolized by the spiritual counseling asked and received from Jesse Jackson, who forgave Bill for election year distancing from Rev. Jackson’s policies and constituents.• How will Bill repay his debts to Rev. Jackson, or to millions of African American or other Progressive voters?
How can Hillary be repaid?
• Is Bill correct that nothing short of a Hillary Presidency can repay his debts to Hillary?• … that it’s not enough to have riches, global admiration, entry into the history books as Secretary of State?• Perhaps so.• But this payment is not Bill’s to give.• Only the public can give the Presidency, especially now that the political strategy perfected by Bill is running out steam in the face of public awareness and resistance.
Why isn’t Hillary’s money and resume overwhelming Bernie?
• Every political strategy has a limited shelf-life, and the Clintons’ has gotten stale.• But Hillary cannot easily distance herself from it, because was alongside Bill throughout his Presidency of personal and political betrayals.• So when Bill wonders what is going wrong-- again-- with Hillary’s campaigning for the Presidency, he can see the biggest answer by looking in the mirror.• This "incomparable genius" must have seen this answer, which adds another level to our understanding of "what Bill Clinton is so angry about."
Bottom lines
• Only Bill can pay back his debts to Hillary.• We don’t owe Hillary anything.• We are the ones who are owed, for the past tolerance, support, enabling and unintended consequences of Bill’s and Hillary’s many self-serving choices.• We are the ones who should be angry-- and we are.
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