The Bill Factor

And if the position of State Secretary was taken away from Hillary because of her husband? This is the question being asked by a big number of journalists, advisers and Americans, every backyard for that matter, in the space of hours.

Certainly, the 42nd U.S. President isn’t very fond of the 44th and is very also very critical of him: according to Newsweek, Bill Clinton put together a list of 81 pages to summarize the declarations and blows bellow the belt Obama used against the former president’s wife during the primaries.

But, then you’ll ask, the former president has said multiple times that he supported the democrat candidate, giving the impression that the war hatch has been buried. Perhaps. On the other hand, Bill Clinton himself estimated that his wife would “make a great Secretary of State” if she was nominated in the position.

Only this time the problem of whether she is made for the position of SecState is not merely one of incompatibility of character or even of knowledge – there are those who say it will take the likes of her to stay away from Joe Biden’s shadow of an expert in foreign affairs.

If we are to believe Politico, Barack Obama has no intention of officially offering the position to the former First Lady, as long as he is not certain there is no conflict of interests between such a nomination and the fact that Hillary Clinton is the wife of a former resident of the White House who is also the president of a huge foundation and of a library named after him.

And it is very sad that that is a problem. Because, in the meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation received $81 million from foreign countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Norway and Morocco to help fighting against AIDS, malaria and climate change. This also applies to his presidential library in Arkansas which found itself giving huge amounts of money on behalf of Saudi Royal family members or an Iranian businessman.

Not to mention all the connections Bill Clinton was able to tie with other governments when he was still in the White House, which themselves would pose a problem. Anyway, there is another obstacle in the way of this possible nomination. It’s NYT’s editorialist and critic of the Clinton Duo, Maureen Dowd, who said in last weeks publication: “If Hillary wants to be Madame Secretary, Bill will have to put away the 81-page list and pick up the 63 questions in the Obama vetting questionnaire.”

But the 67 questions of this questionnaire are very personal and also concern the spouses of the candidates running for a position in Obama’s administration. We could not even begin to imagine the length of Bill’s reply to the eighth question: “Briefly describe the most controversial matters you have been involved with during the course of your career.” It would be quite a feat…