Hillaryland erupts over Vanity Fair piece on Bill

by: Pam Spaulding

Mon Jun 02, 2008 at 00:00:00 AM EDT

This winter, as Clinton moved with seeming abandon to stain his wife's presidential campaign in the name of saving it, as disclosures about his dubious associates piled up, as his refusal to disclose the names of donors to his presidential library and foundation and his and his wife's reluctance to release their income-tax returns created crippling and completely avoidable distractions for Hillary Clinton's own long-suffering ambition, I found myself asking again and again, What's the matter with him?

As I sought to answer that question for myself, in conversations with dozens of current and onetime Clinton aides, many of whom I have known all these years (Clinton himself declined to be interviewed), I realized just how much about the former president is not known, and not knowable, at the moment, mostly because of his unapologetic stonewalling. Virtually no one, except Ron Burkle, knows just what Clinton put into Burkle's investment business, or just what he has done since to earn millions of dollars, with the prospect of reaping millions more. Most of the names of the donors who have contributed some $500 million to Clinton's library and foundation over the past decade are not known, either. Virtually no one, except his doctors and family, knows the precise state of Clinton's health. Virtually no one really knows what strategic role he has played in his wife's campaign.

Clinton's temper has continued to get the better of him. By the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, he was reduced, in a Philadelphia radio phone interview, to denying that his comments in South Carolina had been in any way racially charged, and instead insisted that the Obama camp "played the race card on me." He sputtered, "I mean, this is just, you know ... You really gotta go something to play the race card with me-my office is in Harlem."

At the end of the interview, apparently unaware that he was still on the air, Clinton was heard to say, "I don't think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?" Asked the next day by another reporter what he had meant by saying the Obama campaign "was playing the race card," Clinton would have none of it. "No, no, no, that's not what I said," he erupted, as if he did not know that his earlier comments had been recorded and were all over the Internet. He added, "You always follow me around and play these little games, and I'm not going to play your games today." It's a nice question, just who was playing the games. When I asked a Clinton campaign official how the former president could have issued such a flat denial, the aide immediately responded, with no trace of irony, that the offending reporter had used the word "playing," while in the radio interview Clinton had used the word "played." I'm not sure whether that makes Clinton's outburst better or worse, but it's of a piece with the parser the public knows so well.

On the charge that Clinton hurt Hillary's campaign, this is the official response from Hillaryland. I'm not sure how this spin addresses matters, but we report, you decide.

VF Claims: President Clinton had a negative impact on his wife's campaign.

The Facts: Independent observers continue to praise President Clinton's abilities on the stump: "I have always said that Bill Clinton is still par excellence among all of them [speakers on the stump]." [Michael Smerconish on MSNBC, 5/12/08]

In his role as spouse/surrogate, Bill Clinton is still the gold standard: "And a spouse who I think gives the best stump speech of any spouse I`ve seen, with the exception of Bill Clinton." [Mark Halperin on Charlie Rose, 5/6/08]

The New York Times has praised President Clinton's "command of language," "appreciation of the urgency" of the campaign, ability to boil down a subject to its essence resulting nodding heads, and "political skills and fighting style." [New York Times, 5/5/08]

Finally, the data shows that Sen. Clinton won by huge margins in several rural counties that her husband visited: 44 percentage points in Armstrong County, 44 points in Cambria County, 48 points in Carbon County and 50 points in Greene County. This compares with an edge of 26 points for Hillary among rural voters statewide. In Bucks County, a Philadelphia suburb that Mr. Clinton visited, Sen. Clinton won by 26 points, compared with only three points in suburban Philadelphia as a whole. [WSJ, 4/26/08]