David Broder’s Ramblings
15 November 2007 10:00 am by Taylor Marsh
David Broder’s Ramblings on the Clinton Marriage
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Someone needs to up his Ginkgo biloba.
What Broder said last
week.
New York: Will you and the media ever apply as much scrutiny to the Giuliani
marriages as you have done to the single Clinton marriage?David S. Broder: I plan to leave both subjects alone.
What he wrote today.
The former president’s intervention — volunteered during a campaign appearance
on her behalf in South Carolina — raised the second, and largely unspoken,
issue identified by my friend from the Clinton administration: the two-headed
campaign and the prospect of a dual presidency.(snip)
No one who has read or studied the large literature of memoirs and biographies
of the Clintons and their circle can doubt the intimacy and the mutual dependence
of their political and personal partnership.No one can reasonably expect that partnership to end should Hillary Clinton
be elected president. But the country must decide whether it is comfortable
with such a sharing of the power and authority of the highest office in the
land.It is a difficult question for any of the Democratic rivals to raise. But
it lingers, even if unasked. … ..
Broder goes on: Put the former president into the picture — however “sanitized”
or insulated his role is supposed to be — and the dimensions of the problem
become even larger.
Excuse me, Mr. Dean of Washington, but Bill Clinton as a “problem” for Hillary
is only in your mind. Going back to 2006, Americans preferred Bill to George W. Bush by a margin of 2 to 1.
On foreign affairs, the margin was 56 percent to 32 percent in Clinton’s favor; on taxes, it was 51 percent to 35 percent for Clinton; and on handling natural disasters, it was 51 percent.to 30 percent, also favoring Clinton. Moreover, 59 percent said Bush has done more to divide the country, while only 27 percent said Clinton had.
Most of the American public, for whom you pontificate
on high, would take Bill Clinton back today in a heart beat. It’s only you over exercised beltway types who see him as a liability. Does anyone believe Republicans would relish
running about Bill Clinton today? Thinking that Bill Clinton isn’t an asset to Hillary is absurd. Thinking she wouldn’t rely on him as an adviser and that the American people wouldn’t find that a plus is as well.
Bill Clinton’s approval rating is around 66% today. If there’s an iceberg ahead concerning the Clintons, if she’s the nominee, it’s headed for the Republicans.
