Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself

If nothing else, Clinton's high-visibility role, and his constant reminders that the Clintons were and are a team, strongly suggest that they will remain one if Hillary is elected. Throughout his speech at Huger's restaurant in Charleston, he used the first-person plural as well as the singular, referring to Hillary and himself as "we" and to achievements from his White House days as "ours." Clinton is careful to say he will not take a formal job in his wife's administration. "I'd be like the Abominable Snowman," Clinton told reporters last Monday. "I'd be Bigfooting everybody even if I tried not to. There's almost no way you can avoid that." But at other times he can't resist signaling that he would be a force to be reckoned with. Speaking in Charleston, he told the audience that Hillary had asked him to mobilize leaders from both parties who disagree with Bush's foreign policy and go to the rest of the world and, as Clinton put it, proclaim, "We're ba-a-ck!" The crowd whooped and hollered at Clinton's cheekiness.

The Obama campaign and a good part of the media elite splutter that such talk only underscores that the Clinton campaign is about the tired old politics of yesterday, while Obama is about tomorrow. Maybe so, but a sizable portion of the American public, certainly in the Democratic Party, longs for yesterday—the mid-'90s, when the economy was booming and the world seemed at peace. Clinton campaign staffers point out that New Hampshire Democrats gave Bill Clinton an approval rating of 83 percent in primary exit polls even as the media were clucking over his "fairy tale" remark.

The advisers closest to Hillary—a circle of old friends and aides, almost entirely women, known as "Hillaryland"—are particularly frustrated by perceived media bias against the Clintons. They especially chide MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews (who publicly apologized last week for seeming "disrespectful" to Hillary) and the Times's Dowd. In the collective view of Hillaryland, the press critics have a sexist double standard. The pundits squawk when Bill Clinton goes out to defend his wife, Hillary's friends say, but they make barely a peep when Michelle Obama plays the role of hard-hitting surrogate for her husband. Some of Hillary's old-time allies are irked at her campaign staff, particularly chief strategist Mark Penn and ad guru Mandy Grunwald, for not doing a better job of softening Hillary's sternness in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. Lately some Hillarylanders, notably Maggie Williams, Hillary's former chief of staff as First Lady and later a Bill Clinton aide, have played a more prominent role in the campaign. And Hillary has shown a more human side, memorably getting misty-eyed before the New Hampshire primary.

It is true that Bill gets more, and much tougher, scrutiny than Michelle Obama or any of Obama's surrogates (who, it is also true, are not above taking thinly veiled swipes at Hillary; Michelle has said, "If you can't take care of your own house, you can't take care of the White House"). But the fact is that Bill Clinton is not like any other would-be First Spouse or First Friend. He is a former president of the United States with a global-size ego and need for attention. And he is a very hard man to keep down. A few minutes after Clinton berated the NEWSWEEK REPORTER for bringing up Obama's criticisms, he laced into a reporter who asked if he was accusing Obama of interjecting race into the campaign. "You just want one more story!" Clinton hissed. "Shame on you! … you just want one more story! Print the facts. Nobody ever prints any facts."

With that, he was off again, racing across South Carolina, through the small towns of the rural countryside, where he was introduced by one local pol as "father of Chelsea Clinton and one bad saxophone-playing dude, the 42nd president of the United States who is campaigning for First Husband USA." Clinton was greeted by a standing ovation by the overflow crowd of 300, about 90 percent of whom were black. At the end of the event, people knocked over each other to get to the front of the receiving line for photographs. A handful of reporters followed Clinton out of a side entrance to shoot questions at him. Clinton's handlers asked the local police to herd the reporters back inside so Clinton could avoid the media at this stop, unlike the last. Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

With Karen Breslau, Michael Hirsh, Eleanor Clift, Arian Campo-Flores, Martha Brant, Richard Wolffe, Elise Soukup and Steve Tuttle

© 2008