Much maligned Maureen Down, listening to the voices in her head the other day:
“Mr. President, I’m going to run a very transparent administration, everything on C-Span. So I’ll need a full accounting of your foundation donors.”
“Oh, sure thing, buddy, from this day forward.”
“No, Bill, we’ll need full disclosure of your business dealings for the last eight years. And you can no longer accept Arab millions — not if I’m going to talk tough to them about oil. I can’t send Hillary on diplomatic missions to the Middle East if you’re taking money from Dubai and Kuwait. And no more trips to Kazakhstan. I wouldn’t want to have to put a Geiger-counter bracelet on you to check that you’re not involved in another shady uranium deal.”
“Ha, ha.”
“We need to know where that $11 million came from that you guys loaned your campaign. And the $15 million from Ron Burkle at Yucaipa and the $3 million from Vinod Gupta. And you must spill about any offshore accounts in the Caymans. And no more big-money speeches, Bill. You guys have already cashed in for more than $100 million.”
***“You know, Barack, the more I’m seein’ what you’ve got in mind for me, the more I’m worryin’ that Hillary’s just not cut out for this job. You don’t want her glomming on to everythin’. Since she’s almost even with the delegates, she’ll want to go halfsies in the government. She’ll want to run foreign policy, cause you know nothin’ about that. And legal stuff, because you never practiced real law. And economic policy, ’cause she connected better with working-class voters. And everything to do with white people, of course. I’ve got to level with you, man. Hillary’s a lot of work. And that Kathleen Sebelius is terrific and has those twinkly eyes.”
The WSJ:
Supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton suggested she would like to be Sen. Barack Obama’s running mate, but close advisers to Sen. Obama are signaling that an Obama-Clinton ticket is highly unlikely.
Some in the Clinton camp also noted a possible deal-breaker for a party-unity ticket: Bill Clinton may balk at releasing records of his business dealings and big donors to his presidential library.
Discuss.
jibeaux
What? I thought they were vetted, baby?!
IMHO, the Ship of Veep Possibilities steamed off merrily for foreign shores when Hillary endorsed McCain as C-in-C.
rishathra
Hillary’s best position within an Obama Administration: Senator from New York (and yes, I’m a constituent of hers).
Gimme Richardson or Sebelius for VP.
Incertus
Leave it to Dowd to assume that Bill Clinton would be able to strongarm his wife into backing away from the VP slot if it were offered to her. Anyone not insane would have cast the discussion as between Obama and Hillary Clinton, not Bill, but Dowd’s never gotten over her obsession with the Clenis.
Roger S. Smith
With Hillary as Veep his presidency would be far less than it could be with her and Bill out of the White House…Period.
Jim Webb…now, that would be cool.
Peace ;-)>
cleek
this is just thinly-disguised sexism. he secretly wants Hillary to fail! i blame the patriarchy.
Tom Hilton
What Incertus said.
I think the other deal-breaker is the fact that there has been public pressure from the Clinton campaign (not necessarily from Clinton herself–that’s sort of unclear) to offer her the VP post. The more public pressure there is, the less he stands to gain from agreeing–because he’ll look ‘weak’ if he gives her the post (in the Washington press corps narrative, it’s all about ‘weakness’ vs. ‘strength’).
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I think that when the campaign memoirs are written, it will come out that the Obama and his staff looked at the HRC campaign and saw something that nobody else did. That what all of the pundits and other politicians were thinking was one of Hillary’s biggest strengths in the campaign coming up was actually a very big vulnerability which they could exploit: Bill Clinton. The guy has a really bad ratio of ego to self-control, and I suspect that Obama and his people figured out pretty quickly that if they needled Bill, got in some subtle digs which would get under his skin, that eventually he would turn into a loose cannon and start flailing around doing all sorts of damage to Hillary’s campaign from the inside. Drama has been the signature of the Clintons, and in this case it was used against them. I don’t think this was an accident.
jibeaux
I dunno whether that’s true or not, but I have my suspicions about this technique being used on McMavericky…
El Cid
If Hillary were to be his VP, and Bill still hanging about, I don’t see a potential Obama administration ever being defined as really being his. Supporters of the Clintons would ascribe everything positive to the interventions of the Clintons, and everything negative to Obama’s, and anti-Clintonites would do the reverse. I think it’s a bad, bad idea.
Beth in VA
I agree with Left Turn in Albuquerque. Bill Clinton has been the elephant in the room. The money issues are huge, but also just the issue of what kind of role he’d play. Hillary Clinton never addressed this in the campaign. And when it became clear that he was a free-agent on the road in the campaign, speaking his mind without reality-checks, his position seems untenable.
Bill should be the elder statesman to give Obama advice upon occasion. But as a hands-on spouse, he’s a nightmare.
Zifnab
Obama should offer McCain the VP spot, listing Hillary’s high opinion of him as a defining qualification.
sunny
Definitely a bad idea El Cid in just the way you describe.
In addition, who in their right mind wouldn’t suspect the Clinton’s would be capable of deliberately sabotaging his admin for their own aggrandizement?
sunny
Publicly pressuring him didn’t help. Just another example of Clinton’s tone deaf miscalculations.
sunny
oops, bad blockquoting, bad bad. sorry.
gypsy howell
I could never ever ever understand why people thought having Hillary as VP would be in any way acceptable to Obama. Can’t you picture ol’ Bill stepping on Obama’s dick every chance he got? What possible upside could there be for *anyone* to have Bill as VP-Spouse-In-Chief?
I’m saying this as someone who supported Clinton in both his terms, even through the ridiculous Monica stuff. (Over the last few years though, he’s been diminished in my eyes, starting with palling around with GHWB) I just don’t see how any President could have a former president as their VP’s spouse — how could that possibly work out?
jp
So Bill would have to make all this disclosures if Hills were running for VP, but HASN’T had to make them while she’s been running for President? Genuine question, why’s that?
Jamey
Oh, fuck Dowd. With a rolled-up NY Times.
Sure, NOW she can appear to be on the right side of the debate. And take more swipes at Clinton? Avec pleasure!
Louise
I have no doubt they are either doing this now or will, with glee, throughout the rest of the campaign. If they don’t they’re crazy.
Dennis - SGMM
If Bill is unwilling to have his financial records vetted for a Clinton VP job then how did they expect to get through the general election without the issue of his finances being raised? Seems to me that the Republicans would have been able to imply all sorts of dark things about the subject if Bill kept mum on the finances of the Clinton Foundation and his presidential library.
sunny
What jp said-why’s that?
Just another reminder that the Clinton’s were not properly “vetted” by the media during this primary-as opposed to the 90’s. Things change, I suppose. Having a member of the Bush Crime Family as a good pal didn’t hurt, I’m sure.
sunny
I think at some point Obama should rub McInsanes bald head-why not? Boosh does that to baldies all the time-and see if McI calls him a [email protected]!t and a trollope.
Napoleon
Sweet, TPM is reporting that Obama is keeping Howard Dean on as DNC chair. I can practically hear the Clintonista’s heads (particularly Paul B.) exploding from here.
SmilingPolitely
Yep, a Hill and Bill co-ticket would be a Cheney-esque shadow, looming over Obama’s presidency.
No thanks!
orogeny
I agree completely that the idea Hillary for VP is nonsense. There’s no way Obama is going to put himself in the position of having to fight with the Big Dog about every campaign decision. Bill’s got too big an ego to operate under someone else’s orders during the campaign. From the polling data I saw the other day, Edwards looks like a good choice to me.
On the other hand, John’s residual CDS from his Republican years continues to show up on a regular basis. Other than the fact that he continues to hate the Clintons, there is no reason to believe that there has been anything financially illegal or unethical done by Bill Clinton. Citing Maureen Dowd as though there is validity to anything she has to say about the Clintons just shows how much CDS John still retains. As others have noted, Clinton’s finances would have been subjected to the same kind of scrutiny if Hillary had won the primaries as they would be if she were the VP choice.
John Cole
I am going to go out and guess that CDS stands for Cole Derangement Syndrome, and then assert that orogeny suffers from it.
I wasn’t “citing” Maureen Dowd. I was citing a reporter in the WSJ that has echoed reports elsewhere echoing this, and then noting that MODO’s voices in her head said somethign like this jus tthe other day.
Cole Derangement Syndrome is killing you, orogeny.
Marc
Bill Clinton has been reluctant to release the financial record of donations to the foundation (and presidential library). Hillary Clinton has a financial stake in both, just as McCain has one from the fortune of his wife. It isn’t a form of irrational hatred to need to see these records. Spousal issues were deadly for Ferraro in 1984, for example; much of her disastrous contribution to the contest was spent defending her husband’s shady real estate deals. These are the sort of cheap distractions, with actual conflicts of interest to worry about, that can turn a VP from asset to liability. I think there are some large and embarrassing donations that Clinton got. Not illegal – just things like money from foreign dictators. We don’t need the drama, and that in the end violates the central rule for selecting a running mate: first do no harm. Lack of transparency for the Dems also makes it harder to demand transparency from the GOP.
orogeny
Ah c’mon, John. “Cole Derangement Syndrome”? I don’t hate you, I liked you and Balloon Juice when you were a Republican and that hasn’t changed since you saw the light and became a Democrat. But in both incarnations, you had (and continue to have) a blind spot when it comes to Bill and Hillary. You’ve hated the Clintons for as long as I’ve been visiting this site, which goes back quite a few years, and that didn’t change when you switch Parties. The title of the post “A point for Modo?” is what led me to believe you were pointing out that she was correct in this case.
Otto Man
OT, but hilarious.
SmilingPolitely
John bent over backwards defending the Clintons early in this primary season, back before the Clinton’s started powering their campaign with lunacy.
Andrei
In the department of putting his [party’s] money where his mouth is:
Democratic Party Will No Longer Accept Washington Lobbyist Donations
Brachiator
MoDo was actually quite on the money with her insinuation that the issue of “transparency” over Bill’s financial dealings would provide both Obama and Senator Clinton with a plausible reason for dealing with the public clamor for a supposed Obama/Clinton “dream ticket.”
Senator Clinton’s speech the other night may provide the best reason why she should not be considered for VP. As First Lady (and supposed co-governor and co-president) Hillary could keep offering her “opinion” even if she were ultimately ignored. But in her speech, Hillary talked about wanting to talk about her stand on the issues, which is OK for a Senator, but totally inappropriate for a VP, whose first responsibility is to support the policies of the president. By inadvertently showing signs that she expected to be able to run an agenda independent of Obama or even the Democratic Party platform, she doomed any chance that she could be considered for the VP choice.
Bill could have been a great advisor to Hillary and to Obama. Unfortunately, his ego appears to get in the way, and as spouse of the VP, he would have even less to do than if he were First Gentleman, and you just don’t want to let Bill Clinton wander around with nothing to keep him occupied.
AkaDad
Obama isn’t President yet and we’re seeing change.
Suck it, anti-changers!
Racer 286
Really Folks,
Maureen Dowd and “citing a reporter in the WSJ that has echoed reports elsewhere echoing this, and then noting that MODO’s voices in her head said somethign like this jus tthe other day.”
Dowd and the WSJ, now there are a couple of real Obama insiders who know a lot about the campaign and what Senator Obama is thinking.
How about we disregard anything, and everything from Dowd and the WSJ, since we know it will be an attach, in some way or from some direction, against Senator Obama or the Democratic Party and its office holders.
jibeaux
Orogeny, the WSJ piece (which is the authority, not Dowd) states this concern comes from “some in the Clinton camp”. I think we can safely say they’re not suffering from CDS. Now just admit you’re wrong like a big girl.
Sasha
It would seem that Obama has found an elegant and unique method to get the bomb to defuse itself.
Joel Patterson
As fun as the media side of all this is (and that’s what Maureen Dowd thinks matters), the organizational factors of campaigns are far more important to winning. Obama’s team had a totally different approach than Clinton’s team (as John Cole notes in that other post about the Fulda Gap) and bringing in Hillary’s top advisers would just create internal clashes, because they don’t know how to do it the Obama-Plouffe-Axelrod way. It will be much easier to pick a VP like Sebelius (who has no national organization that would have to folded into Obama’s) or Richardson (whose national organization wasn’t much bigger than Sebelius’).
Bill Clinton’s ego didn’t lose this election–the Hillary team’s overconfidence about winning the big states with Michigan and Florida tied behind their back lost it.
Dennis-SGMM has it right: The Clintons no doubt expected to have their finances scrutinized for the general, so the idea that it’s a sticking point on the dream ticket is poorly supported. But it’s easy spin to put in print.
BTW, does anyone here think that Mondale lost predominantly because of bad headlines about Ferraro’s spouse? A better VP would not have switched one state away from Reagan.
orogeny
Golly, jibeaux, “some in the Clinton camp”…I didn’t realize that the WSJ (always a bastion of pro-Clinton sentiment) article was so well documented. You’re awfully naive if you actually accept that the phrase “some in the Clinton camp” attaches any level of confidence to the piece. Hell, “some in the Clinton camp” could be anybody..the janitor, a secretary, some staffer that hates Bill. If they exist at all, it’s someone who wants to say something bad about the ex-President without having the cojones to say it publicly.
Maybe you ought to just admit that you don’t have any reason to believe the article other than the fact that you want to believe something bad that someone said about Bill Clinton.
thefncrow
orogeny Says:
What you’re missing is that Obama has an advantage over McCain in transparency. Hillary kept delaying and delaying releasing her tax records, and even then she didn’t release a full accounting of Bill’s activity. McCain’s released his tax records, but won’t release his wife’s records.
Obama doesn’t have this issue, and so he can hit McCain on the transparency issues, except, of course, if he’s got a VP who has a spouse who also won’t release those records. Bill Clinton gives John McCain cover to keep Cindy McCain’s records closed.
You’re right, Hillary would have to deal with this as a GE candidate. Obama doesn’t, and he can rightly say “If you want to be on this ticket, you can’t have this hidden. You’d be handicapping us otherwise.”
You don’t need proof of impropriety, because even the slightest appearance of impropriety is enough.
I thought the same thing, honestly. I told some folks I know that Hillary wouldn’t be the VP candidate, because before that could be considered by the Obama camp, you’d need two things to happen.
1) Bill’s hidden donors would tarnish the Obama campaign’s reputation for transparency, and so Bill has to give up on hiding both his tax returns and donor lists for the Clinton Presidential Library.
2) Hillary’s vote for the war and subsequent slippery handling of the war is an issue if he wants to hammer McCain on it. Yes, Hillary is much better on the war than McCain, but one of the things Hillary never did was really come clean and apologize for her vote. With Iraq as important as it is, I say that Hillary needs to come out and do a full Edwards on her Iraq vote, no “if I knew then what I knew now”, no blaming it on being misled by Bush. A simple acceptance that her vote was the wrong thing to do, that she apologizes, and, that with the approval of the American people, she wants to work hard to fix the mistake she made 6 years ago.
I don’t think Bill wants to give up his income sources and library donors, and I don’t think Hillary would want to make a public apology like that, which means I think she won’t end up on the ticket. That’s beyond the point that I don’t think she should be on it.
jibeaux
Let’s try Logic 101, shall we?
Did I say I believed it? Nope. Did I say it was true? Nope. I have no idea whether it is or isn’t. You said the following:
He wasn’t citing her, for the forty millionth time, he was citing the WSJ. He was quoting MoDo, I assume because he found the riff amusing.
I don’t know whether “some in the Clinton camp” saying something makes it true or not, and I didn’t say that it did. I said they probably didn’t have CDS. Now you can argue that they do have CDS, or you can admit that you were wrong, or you can go build a giant strawman in your back yard and yell at it.
orogeny
Wait a minute…didn’t the Clintons release their tax records? They file jointly and, while she at first said that she wasn’t going to release them until she won the nomination, Hillary released those returns in April. We’re not talking about Bill’s “income sources,” we’re talking about funding for his charitable foundation and the Clinton Library, neither of which are a source of income for either of the Clintons.
orogeny
Logic 101, eh? So, titling a post “A Point for MoDo?” then quoting her at length, then citing a WSJ article that supports her speculation is not “citing Maureen Dowd?”
jibeaux
Oh. My. Word. Are you contending that Maureen Dowd, rather than “some in the Clinton camp”, is the person who originally contended that Bill might balk at full disclosure of his business dealings and donors? Are you really contending that? Because we can bicker all day about the semantics of cite = quote or cite = name as an authority, and it doesn’t freakin’ matter, does it?
To repeat: you used as an example of John’s alleged CDS a concern that the WSJ raised, by citing people in the Clinton camp. This is as simple as it gets. And you have ducked and bobbed and weaved and picked nits, but you have not explained or taken it back.
les
I’m not sure this is true; McLame will be fighting the release of Cindy’s financials, and if both party candidates wanted to hide the same thing, it could just be ignored till it died. It’s not like the Clintons don’t have experience stonewalling–Bill’s administration wasn’t a lot more forthcoming than Shrub’s, and Hillary’s initial response to pretty much any request for information in those days was “make me!” They may well have thought they would never have to give out his and his foundation’s info.
Warren Terra
No points for MoDo. She took a genuinely important point, that the Clintons had still not been vetted and seemed unwilling to undergo vetting, a point that the pundits had somehow refused to engage with for the entire campaign – and she vomited all over that point with invented dialogue, putting her words into peoples’ mouths and her thoughts into peoples’ heads. And then just for fun she decided that Michelle Obama is scary or that Bill is scared by a successful woman.
As her columns usually are, MoDo’s column was almost entirely about the weird dialogue inside MoDo’s head. Which may be why, despite the premium real estate of the Times Op-Ed page and the critical and under-discussed nature of the factual content upon which the column was based, MoDo’s column had no impact when it was released. Consider how much of an impact Todd Purdum’s article has had. Purdum covers some of the same ground, and lards it up with a bunch of sleaze and insinuation. It’s a lousy piece – but it doesn’t actually invent movie scenes, and its substantial parts have more impact despite being embedded in such a lousy article. Purdum, maybe, had an impact. MoDo is a waste of the most valuable Op-Ed space in the country.
DonnaInMichigan
I keep hearing about those 18 million people who voted for Hillary, and that she says deserves their voices heard at the convention…
Well I would like those voters broken down to:
What percentage of those voters, who voted for Hillary, ONLY because they wanted Bill Clinton to have a back door into the white house…kind of a 3rd swing as President?
What percentage of those voters, were the Rush Limbaugh, “Operation Chaos” votes, that would of never voted for her come November?
What percentage of those voters, who voted for Hillary, ONLY did so, not because she was the RIGHT choice, but because she was a woman, and they wanted to see a woman become POTUS.
What percentage of those voters, who voted for Hillary, would NEVER vote “outside their own race” aka, Caucasians that would never EVER in their lifetime, vote for a black, hispanic, asian American??
What percentage of those voters who voted for Hilllary, did so, hoping they could recapture the 90’s?
If we could break those votes down, I would imagine that we would find out, it wasn’t because of HER or her policies, or that they felt she was the BEST candidate…but rather they wanted BILL back in the white house, or because she is a woman, OR there was no way, they were going to let a black man, be president. Period.
dj spellchecka
Actually headline from NYTimes.com:
“Clinton Says Running Mate Choice Is Obama’s.”
that’s really, really big of her, don’t you think?
DonnaInMichigan
Yes dj…
About as big of her, when she stated that HE could be HER VP, when he was winning all the primaries, and was ahead of her in delegates, states won, popular vote, etc.
Yet of course, she kept harping on how unelectable he was….
chopper
well hills was assuming she’d end up running against mccain, of course. mccain isn’t exactly excited about his wife’s finances becoming public any more than hills is excited about the same happening to bill, so i reckon she thought both campaigns would keep their mouths shut.
Jeff
I just don’t see how any President could have a former president as their VP’s spouse —how could that possibly work out?
Ya know, Rossalyn Carter might be a bit old, but she’d make a helluva VP!