How Bill Clinton Squandered His Reputation

Hillary Clinton is facing defeat in the U.S. presidential primaries. Bill Clinton has already lost due to the fact that he has morphed into a political rowdy.

While America’s media awaits the end of the presidential primaries in early June, they while away the time with the maliciously gleeful question “Whatever happened to Bill Clinton?” His wife can now only emerge victorious over Barack Obama with the help of a miracle. For Bill Clinton, not even that would help. The press has already dubbed him the “biggest loser of the election season.”

Since the beginning of the year, the television cameras have depicted the ex-president over and over as a red-faced bully waving an admonishing finger and picking fights with voters and reporters. That isn’t at all the Bill Clinton who, while he didn’t leave the White House squeaky clean, nevertheless later redeemed himself as do-gooder in the world. After his by-pass surgery, he established his charitable foundation’s headquarters in Harlem and it has since raised large sums for the battles against AIDS, malaria, and climate change. The Democrat, who called every criticism of him part of a “great right-wing conspiracy,” was suddenly confident enough to join his predecessor George H. W. Bush in efforts to help tsunami victims. And no one begrudged him the high income he earned as a speaker and consultant.

By the beginning of the primaries, however, Bill Clinton began talking less about his wife’s attributes and more about himself. After Hillary’s loss in Iowa, he began to alarm his wife with his angry outbursts and unfounded attacks on Barack Obama. Obama, he claimed, was an admirer of Ronald Reagan. Then he dismissed him as a man without a country and the “black candidate.” The bill came to Hillary in the South Carolina primary where blacks, who historically had counted as her most loyal constituency, flocked to Obama. That started a trend that has led to her hopeless position today. The African-American Representative, James Clyburn (D-SC), later insinuated that Bill Clinton was acting as “Hilllary’s hatchetman.” Carl Bernstein, one of Hillary’s biographers, saw this as Bill Clinton’s lapse into the worst of his old habits: next to the shining intellectual and “born politician” was always the hillbilly who like some Hollywood stars played dirty. This thin-skinned and hot-tempered man was described by New Yorker journalist Kurt Anderson as a “desperate narcissist”: “With Bill, it’s always about Bill.” Bernstein and Anderson both imply that Bill Clinton feels he is being personally attacked by Obama. Somewhere during the course of the primaries, Hillary’s goal took a back seat to his own legacy. If Obama wants to free the USA from the clutches of “the same old people playing the same old Washington games,” he’s obviously referring to the Clinton’s and their scandals.

When the Clintons make joint appearances at election functions, it’s apparent from Bill’s facial expressions that he’s distraught over his wife’s lack of oratory skills yet feels obligated to play the faithful campaigner. New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta claim in their Hillary biography “Her Way” that the pair has actually made a pact in order to get themselves back into the White House.

Since her election to the Senate in 2000, Hillary Clinton has developed an independent image, partly to distance herself from the scandals of her husband’s presidency. Bill’s recent outbreaks conjure up memories of the “circus of the Clinton years” not only for Carl Bernstein, many voters wonder what role an uncontrollable Bill would play in Hillary’s administration.

Since February, Hillary has reacted and banned her husband from elections in rural areas like the mountain valleys of the Appalachians. As her recent triumph in West Virginia has shown, Bill’s work for her bore fruit. Nationwide, on the other hand, Bill’s popularity has sunk to its lowest point since his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Discontent with Bill Clinton is even on the rise among Democrats. It’s said that he’s egotistical and he’s hurting the party’s election chances in November. But the dearest damage to his battered reputation may be still in the offing, as an insider says, “Bill Clinton won’t be able to get a quarter of a million dollars a speech for much longer.”