Opinion: When B. Clinton speaks, it might as well be her

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In case you wondered which Clinton is really running for the Democratic nomination for president, the former one who’s trying hard to make his spouse the future one is only taking 15 minutes of his speech now to make it clear that the words he’s saying are her words too.

In other words, they’re the same. Which doesn’t make it clear who’s really running. But, hey, it does eliminate any difference.

Bill Clinton, you may recall, was going to keep his savvy campaign charm pretty much in the background this year, quietly raising money and stuff, maybe making a few joint appearances holding hands, so he wouldn’t outshine his not-exactly-warm-and-fuzzy wife. But all that seems to have quietly changed as her large lead inevitably melted her inevitability into statistical ties with Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Now B. Clinton is all over the place most days (back in Iowa Sunday) inventing a new role model for former presidents, not as elder statesmen above involvement in intra-party primaries, but as a political attack dog for his wife, who’s busily trying to warm her image instead in the wintry chills of Iowa and New Hampshire.’When is the last time we elected a president based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running?’ Clinton bluntly asked Charlie Rose on PBS the other evening.

Maybe you can guess which black Illinois senator he was talking about.

Then, B. Clinton went to Wolfeboro, N.H. the other day, his third visit to the ...

Granite state in one month after other visits to Iowa. The Clinton who already was president has been accused of stepping on his wife’s campaign messages by creating distractive controversies and tending to talk more about himself on the trail recently than he does about the Clinton who wants to be president.

So, 15 minutes into his day’s first speech B. Clinton caught himself and said, ‘Everything I’m saying here is my wife’s position, not just mine.’

He went on to reveal his belief that the most important quality in a president is not leadership, not grasp of government and bringing people together, not vision or creative policy skills, not the determination to build and preserve national security, for instance. The most important quality in a president, he said, was the ability to help people.

Then, he cranked up the husbandly hyperbole to perhaps a record high, even for a Southerner. ‘The reason she ought to be president,’ B. Clinton asserted about H. Clinton, ‘over and above her vision and her plans is that she has proven in every position she has ever had in life, whether it was in elected office or not, that she is a world-class genius in making positive changes in other people’s lives.’

No, really. That’s what he said.

-- Andrew Malcolm