By Edwin Cooney
Of course, Bill Clinton is her husband and his support is both natural and expected. Incredibly, she moved to Arkansas to be with Bill -- accepting a teaching position at the Fayetteville campus law school of the University of Arkansas in 1974 -- before she and Bill Clinton had entirely committed themselves to one another. They were married on October 11th, 1975—which just happened to be the ninety-first anniversary of the birth of Eleanor Roosevelt—a woman with whom Hillary has always been very delighted to be associated.
Like Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman who ran a private school and wrote a daily column, Hillary Clinton has been involved in her own profession (law). Both women traveled widely and, of course, both experienced marital infidelity. However, unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, it’s Hillary who is the politically needy one. After all, Eleanor Roosevelt never ran for president. She didn’t need to: in the minds of millions, Eleanor Roosevelt was “First Lady of the World”.
In comparison to “the ugly duckling” -- her own mother called young Anna Eleanor Roosevelt “Granny” -- Mrs. Clinton is almost “Snow White” if not “Sleeping Beauty”. She’s smart, energetic, knowledgeable, and quick on her feet in debate, sensitive to the legitimate needs of the less fortunate, and possesses many other laudable traits. However, Senator Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton needs to be President of the United States of America as much as her husband did. In order to realize this legitimate ambition, she, like most all successful candidates, would be lucky to have a potent politically nuclear incendiary—and she appears to have one in the person of William Jefferson Clinton.
Throughout most of 2007, the Clinton campaign kept the candidate, rather than her famous husband, before the public eye. Their message seemed to be that Hillary Clinton, after all, was woman enough to stand on her own. That strategy was working until she stepped all over it by complaining about the piling on by her male presidential candidate colleagues during an October 2007 debate. Suddenly, Hillary was caught trying to be both the victim as well as the heroine at the same time. It didn’t fly.
Throughout November and into December, it became increasingly clear that Hillary’s old friends, members of “the vast right wing conspiracy”, were just licking their political chops, openly spoiling to run against the lifelong Cubs/Yankee fan from Park Ridge, Illinois.
As the Iowa vote drew near, Barack Obama was joined on the campaign stage by Oprah Winfrey, whose wishes constitute a personal command to millions, and suddenly there was an unanticipated groundswell for the native Hawaiian who now lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Next came New Hampshire. Through a combination of attentive answers to questions and well-placed tears, the woman Senator and perhaps future President snatched victory from the jaws of the audacious and ambitious rookie Illinois senator. Then came Nevada. Suddenly, someone else was leading the anti-Obama attack. It was none other than William Jefferson Clinton. After all, it takes a President -- not a mere presidential candidate -- to take on Senator Barack Hussein Obama.
With America’s forty-second president on the campaign trail, Barack Obama got a healthy lesson in what it would take to bring about political and historic bridge-building, the noble goal of an Obama presidency. First, Senator Obama’s sincerity as a consistent anti-war senator was labeled a “fairy tale” by the former president. Then came another brickbat from the Clinton camp when the Senator herself reminded Americans (after one of Barack Obama’s eloquent addresses about Dr. King and the dream) that it took LBJ to bring about Dr. King’s dreams.
Then there followed the flap over the Culinary Workers Union’s ineffective endorsement of Senator Obama which caused the ex-president to tear into a San Francisco television reporter who had asked Clinton about the lawsuit he’d supposedly just filed against that union.
Finally, the former president criticized Obama for supposedly endorsing Ronald Reagan’s “politically transforming ideas” which had launched Conservative America well on its way to electoral and financial success throughout the 1980’s and much of the 90’s as well as most of what we’ve experienced at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The plan was to put Senator Obama on the defensive and it might have worked except for three factors:
First, Obama hadn’t said that Ronald Reagan’s ideas were good, only that they were “politically transforming ideas” in that they differed from the then conventional political wisdom of the establishment. Second, Senator Obama was able to point out that Mrs. Clinton had herself written laudable things about Ronald Reagan for a book that is about to be published. Finally, without complaining that he’d been attacked, Barack Obama was able to focus attention to Hillary’s “political nuke” by wondering out loud who he is running against. Therein lies the potential Achilles heel of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential quest.
Having endorsed Barack Obama, I am nevertheless aware that Mrs. Clinton still appears to have the inside track to the Democratic nomination. However, Bill Clinton (Hillary’s "political nuke”) has been dropping politically radioactive fallout all over his own party—including his very own candidate. According to Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter -- writing recently in that publication’s Periscope column -- Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman Rahm Emanuel found it necessary to chastise President Clinton during a recent heated telephone conference call. Reportedly they told Mr. Clinton that if racial division occurred within the Democratic party he would be largely to blame. Finally, they urged the former president to back off on Barack Obama. Consequently, Mrs. Clinton during a recent Democratic debate made a reference to the intensity of spousal support each of the candidates were getting and offered something of a political truce. Even so, Mrs. Clinton missed the mark and, perhaps, deliberately so.
As personally partisan as Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Edwards may be, they are only spouses which is something Mrs. Clinton fully realizes. Neither Michelle Obama nor Elizabeth Edwards possess the authoritative political weight of a former president. That realization makes that observation and its truce offering blatantly misleading and opens the door even wider to the danger ahead.
Both Clintons represent exceedingly controversial pasts and personal reputations. Thus, both are capable of doing for the Republican party that which Richard Nixon alone once could do for the Democratic party—specifically, unite it.
With Iraq in the balance and the economy less than stable, it’s just possible that Americans will be sufficiently frustrated to politically “pile on” to the GOP next November. Otherwise, Hillary, along with the rest of us who would gladly follow her instead of suffering further under Republican rule, will need empowering rather than selfish and embittered sniping.
Some may lament Barack Obama’s use of a television personality as his “political nuke”, but even if Oprah Winfrey can be so characterized, at least she’s a controlled “political nuke”.
One of the issues during the forthcoming campaign, should Hillary Clinton be the nominee, will be:
“Senator Clinton,” how can the nation reasonably anticipate your use of your husband—our forty-second president--to its benefit?
That’ll be the public inquiry. The subliminal question may be:
“Mrs. Clinton, isn’t it a fact that you need him whether we do or not—and even more, can you control him? If you can’t, what else can’t you control?”
Note: When Theodore Roosevelt was President, he was once asked by a group of reporters why he couldn’t better control his lively daughter Alice. His response was “I can do only one of two things. I can either be President of the United States or I can control Alice. No man can be expected to do both.”
President Clinton’s very proximity to presidential power will rival three historic occurrences.
The first took place aboard the presidential yacht Potomac in early July 1940 when Franklin D. Roosevelt let his secretary Grace Tully and his chief speech writer Sam Rosenman know that he would definitely accept nomination to a third and unprecedented term.
The second historical occurrence took place at Potsdam, Germany when President Harry Truman offered (during a very private conversation) to make Dwight D. Eisenhower the 1948 Democratic nominee adding that he would accept nomination as Ike’s Vice Presidential running-mate.
The third occurrence took place at the 1980 GOP convention when Reagan forces let it be known that they were considering asking former President Gerald R. Ford to take second place on what was being advanced as “a dream ticket.”
Two of those historical occurrences never came to fruition; presidential power and authority are very touchy matters.
Touchy matters will surely be the basis of the 2008 GOP campaign regardless of who heads its ticket. Presidential control or restraint will inevitably be an issue and, with President Bush’s record of a “preemptive warfare policy”, the Republican candidate is going to have his hands full. However, the political advantage brought on by the question of the wisdom of “preemptive warfare” may well be overwhelmed if, come November, America has another question on its mind:
Who will really be running this country—-President Number Forty-two or would-be President Number Forty-four?”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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