What Will Bill Clinton Do in the White House?

The fact is that Bill Clinton is no longer Bill Clinton, or at least not the Bill 

Add caption

Clinton those of us remember from the 1990s. It’s been 16 years since Bill left office. Thanks to a worshipful mainstream media and the willful blindness of his fans, the same guy who lied under oath about harassing vulnerable women morphed into a lovable rogue.

Good old Bill, with his Irishman’s smile and before-it-was-cool dad bod! He sure likes Big Macs, attention, and *wink wink* the ladies!

But Bill has changed, and worse for him – and for Hillary – so have the times. His mischievous leprechaun smile now seems painted on as he is called out once again to the campaign trail to try to win his wife her own political pot of gold. His chubby frame has melted into a sickly shadow of its former self as the Big Macs gave way to a vegan diet that explains his sallow visage. And the attention once lavished upon him is now falling upon Hillary; he stands to the side, an afterthought, yearning for that spotlight to move back onto him.

Hillary Clinton moved into the White House in 1993, she was not granted the same flexibility. As the chair of the Task Force on National Health Care reform, she was slammed in the press for stepping beyond the reaches of her role, in spite of her clear qualifications to work on policy: the implication was that she was being unladylike. To many Americans, the revelations about her husband’s extramarital sexual proclivities confirmed their belief that Hillary was failing to fulfill the remit of the first lady: to be a pleasant and decorative hostess who represents a “traditional” and anachronistic family: a man in charge, a faithful and helpful woman by his side (even though a number of other presidents and first ladies have also had notable affairs). Indeed, Clinton blamed the affair in part on herself for failing as a wife.