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Cork It, Elvis

Boston Herald: Ted boiling over Bubba.

Or, put another way, return to your “sunnier, supportive-spouse role.” Boston Globe:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign team, seeking to readjust after her lopsided defeat in South Carolina and amid a sense among many Democrats that Mr. Clinton had injected himself clumsily into the race, will try to shift the former president back into the sunnier, supportive-spouse role that he played before Mrs. Clinton’s loss in the Iowa caucuses, Clinton advisers said.

But Democrats said it was not clear whether the effects of Mr. Clinton’s high profile could be brushed away by having him modulate his campaign style.

Jeez … you’d think he’s selling soap or something. Don’t they know it’s all about the commitent? He’s just a hunka hunka burning love.

What’s not clear is how the Globe could possibly publish an article like this one this morning without these quotes from Hill. Herald again:

SARASOTA, Fla. - Her husband’s help did Hillary Clinton no good in South Carolina, and Democratic leaders and commentators across the board have questioned the former president’s outbursts and remarks on the campaign trail. But Hillary is standing by her man.

It’s all about his love and commitment, she said.

“My husband has such a great commitment to me and to my campaign. You know, he loves me just like, you know, husbands and wives get out there and work on each others’ behalf. I certainly did that for him for many years,” Hillary Clinton said on CBS’ “Face The Nation.” She added that “what he is doing for me is obviously out of a sense of deep commitment to me personally but also based on his experience as president as to who he thinks would best lead our country. And I know that in my own support of him going back some years, I sometimes got a little bit carried away. I confess to that.”

Anyway, Globe suggests the Clintons have been too clever by half. Harkening to the Clinton years and Hill’s White House experience risk reminding people of the Clinton years and Hill’s White House experience.

They said Mr. Clinton had upset some of the central themes of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, including her appeal to women and her assertions that her time in the White House during the 1990s amounted to vital experience rather than a link to a presidency defined as much by scandal and partisan divisions as by its successes on fronts like the economy.

Despite Mrs. Clinton’s months-long efforts to build a base of support among women, Clinton advisers said they were concerned that her husband’s recent prominence may have dampened her appeal as a strong female leader. Some advisers said they feared as much after Mr. Obama won 54 percent of the vote from women in South Carolina, including 22 percent of white women and 78 percent of black women, according to polls.

Echoing private remarks by some Clinton advisers, Linda L. Fowler, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, said in an interview that she believed Mr. Clinton’s attacks on Mr. Obama had hurt Mrs. Clinton.

“Voters don’t like the idea of a co-presidency, and he became so high profile that he made people begin to see this as a possible co-presidency,” Ms. Fowler said. “It’s even more problematic because she’s a woman. It looks like she either needs him to fight the big battles for her, or she can’t keep the big dog on the porch.”

Topics: Clintons, pols

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:25 am on Monday, January 28, 2008

2 Responses to “Cork It, Elvis”

1. blogagog Says:
   January 28th, 2008 at 9:20 am

   Bill may love Hillary, but I love her even more. I love her so much, in fact, that I don’t want to see her suffer through 4 years of disastrous presidency. Please, America, would you help my love not have to do that?

   Thanks in advance.

2. tanstaafl Says:
   January 29th, 2008 at 11:04 am

   Circus sideshow, the whole nine yards.

   In words from a fine “piece” in the Weekly Standard…The Failure of Normality…

   The man or woman who seeks out such a life and enjoys its discomforts is not normal. Not crazy necessarily, but not normal, and probably, when the chips are down, not to be trusted, especially when the purpose of it all is to acquire power over other people (also called, in the delicate language of contemporary politics, “public service” or “getting things done on behalf of the American people”).

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