A four term president
Bruce Feirstein in Vanity Fair is convinced that President Clinton is not just campaigning for his wife, but in effect he is campaigning for his own third term. He may be on to something:
Time to face an inconvenient truth: Bill Clinton is running for a third term…For me, the most damning part of this week’s mini-meltdown wasn’t the lecture about the media being at fault for everything, or even the seemingly offhanded, passive-aggressive swipe that “When he put out a hit job on me at the same time he called her the senator from Punjab, I never said a word. And I don’t care about it today. I’m not upset about it.” Because, for me, the really damning thing was a series of sentences he uttered just before the Punjab remark, referring to complaints about the Clinton campaign in Nevada:
“It’s okay. And we’re not hung up about it. And we won anyway. We fought hard. And we won.” In other words, We are running for president. Not Hillary. Not the junior senator from New York. But We — Bill and Hillary — in a de facto end-run around the 22nd Amendment.
Watching the Democrats debate in South Carolina, I was struck by the heated “I’m here. He’s not” exchange between Senators Obama and Clinton because it so perfectly encapsulates the problem with the two Clintons: Bill is out there with a shiv — presumably with the full countenance of his wife — while Hillary deftly manages to avoid being held accountable for him, or taking any responsibility herself. And therein lies my real issue, should this hydra-headed candidacy succeed: Bill Clinton will always be there. He’ll always be larger than life. And, if the last few weeks have demonstrated anything, we’ll never know who’s really calling the shots.
Actually, we suspect that President Clinton is running for a fourth term, not merely a third term. Winning four elections and being around at the end that final term would put President Clinton ahead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who currently holds the record. (FDR died in April 1945, shortly after his fourth inauguration, as you know.) Being the only President who (came back from impeachment and) served four full terms just might be the legacy that a certain man is seeking. Remember: If Hillary wins in November, Bill Clinton will still be addressed as “Mr. President” for the next eight years, and she will not.
(Apparently, related themes are in the air. Bob Herbert, Garry Wills, and Frank Rich all raise somewhat related questions in the NYT. But at the end of the day, despite the tut-tutting, whom do you think they will vote for?)