In this morning’s New York Times, columnist Gail Collins chides Bill Clinton for his recently more active role in his wife’s campaign.
"Now Bill is all over the place—campaign guru, surrogate candidate, one-man first response team. By next week, he’ll be designing the bumper stickers." Collins doesn’t think it helps Hillary to have her husband hanging around.
Of course, the numbers don’t agree. Senator Clinton has won two primaries since her husband has begun barking at Obama. That streak is apt to end Saturday in South Carolina, but no matter—her candidacy was in a tailspin before Iowa, and now its regained its feet. And while it may reinforce some old stereotypes when a husband rushes to the defense of his wife, nobody seems to mind when Elizabeth Edwards smiles sweetly and stabs somebody in the jugular. She’s done it to Ann Coulter, she’s done it to Hillary, and everyone seems to think that’s fine.
I think the media is pretty much non-partisan in its reporting, but what it really likes is a good story, and right now, there’s no better story than the rise of Barack Obama, a new kind of candidate for a new America that’s looking for a change. Bill Clinton is old news and not altogether good news, and the media, with the memory of his sins and shortcomings still in their memory, resents him messing up their dreamy Obama story. I say swing away. It’s a cruel world out there, and if Obama can’t take a punch, I don’t want to have waited until he’s the nominee, or even more ruinously president, to find out. And if he can’t take a punch, I’d rather have as president the lady who delivered it—or who smart enough to nod and wink and have her husband do the job.
RSS 2.0
http://www.playboy.com/mt-tb.cgi/9441