Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Bill Clinton: First Ladies Man?


From a book I read this past year.  Interesting speculation from a close associate of the Clintons:

     "Everybody continues to talk about how badly [Bill] wants Hillary to run.  Why would he want to be the first spouse?" asks a close associate of both Clintons, and who suggests that Bill actually dreads the prospect.  "What's he going to do?  Live back in the White House and do the Christmas cards?"  The former president, who likes to dominate any conversation, is all but certain to be frustrated being confined to the East Wing, kept out of cabinet meetings, and out of the national security meetings in the Situation Room.  A man who has spent the last decade doing pretty much whatever he's wanted to do suddenly will have to have his movements, trips, and associations vetted and cleared by aides to his wife for fear of conflict of interest.
     What does all this portend for 2016?  A former president deeply conflicted.  On the one hand motivated by the altruistic thought that his wife deserves a shot at the presidency.  And on the other prone to give in to his darker qualities--selfishness and self-destructiveness.
     "He'll work his ass off to get her elected," one longtime Clinton friend suggests.  Taking a sip of coffee, he pauses before qualifying his statement.  "But in the back of his mind he would always be thinking, 'Maybe I'd be better off is she weren't elected.'"  He smiles.  "He could sabotage her.  ANn he'd be like, 'Oh, oops.'  And with him, honestly, it could be subconscious, but it's there. If it's there.  If it's conscious, if he's purposely doing it, that's some crazy shit."  ~Daniel Harper, Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine, pp.276-7

House of Cards?


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