Clinton Triangulation Kibble still feeds…

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further… And one fine morning –

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Back in December, I wondered if Bill Clinton wanted Hillary to lose her presidential bid. It was a matter of comparing his “vacation from history” presidency to her presidency which would be “historic” forever, and more.

Perhaps he figures if he can burnish his legacy by “helping to elect the first woman president” (subtext: she couldna done it without me!) it’s all to the good. If his inefficient presidency were to fall by the wayside in the history books, a Hillary in the Oval Office will insure his place, right next to hers.

Victor Davis Hanson says Clinton sees Hillary’s election as a validation of his presidency.

Gay Patriot has a good post up about Bill Clinton’s legacy, which can be summed up in one word, for now: divisiveness.

…instead of building on the legacy of the compromises he helped effect together with the Republican Congress during the middle years of his tenure in the White House, Clinton seems determined to secure his legacy not only as a divisive figure in American politics, but also as a divider in his own party.

I suspect the “divisive” Bill Clinton was always part of the game plan. As I wrote in 2006:

Because Mrs. Clinton is planning a run at the White House, she and her husband are simply shoveling at them the same Triangulation Kibble they used to feed the left (and the center) in 1991 and 1992 – except that this time the ingredients are reversed: this time Bill Clinton is the Hard Left Outside while Hillary is the Deeply Moderate Center. Same food, different packaging; it is a particularly useful recipe for both Clintons because his “centrist” credentials, and her “leftist” credentials are so firmly in place, that no matter how the ingredients are mixed, the same multitudes are fed, and things even taste the same.

When Bill ran for the White House, Hillary was the attack dog who took heat and attention away from his weaknesses. Bill serves in the same capacity for Hillary, today. While you’re being distracted by Bill’s red face and astonishing fairy tales, you’re not reading about Hillary’s Massive Conflict of Interest or Bill’s 20 million dollar payout (and possibly more and more serious conflicts of interest). While you’re reading that one of Obama’s problematic friend, you’re not reading about hers.

The Wall Street Journal says Barack Obama has been a little slow to pick up on the tag-team strategy:

His behavior is part of the familiar Clinton playbook of letting others do the dirty work so the candidate can stay above the fray. Hillary and other surrogates took on the task of saving her husband from his lies under oath by inventing the specter of the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” calling Paula Jones trailer trash, and portraying the widely respected Ken Starr as a rabid partisan.

Now Bill is returning the favor by attacking Mr. Obama; at the same time, other surrogates raise his long-ago cocaine use, only to apologize after it’s been widely reported.

Howard Kurtz describes how the media is complicit in the Clinton domination of anything they wish to dominate:

When Barack Obama said at the debate Monday that he wasn’t sure which Clinton he was running against, he wasn’t kidding. With Hillary Clinton having vacated the Palmetto State, Bill is the Clinton campaign here. And the buzz among reporters was about dropping off the Obama tour to watch 42 in action.

Some in the press are disgusted, but they don’t get much notice.

It is really pretty shameless. Hillary claims that all of the presidential candidates have “passionate spouses” working for them, but she’s the only one whose spouse is a former president, media darling and de facto head of the Democrat party. She plays a nasty game with disingenuous wide eyes, and she succeeds at it, largely because the cynical and bored media are entertained by it and because – possibly – they’re afraid to not appreciate the Clinton moxie. They don’t want to have to grovel and apologize to the Clinton’s for suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Hillary should stop “succeeding” by virtue of her marriage or various “victimizations” and try to do it based on her thin senate record (at least she and Obama would then be on a fairly level playing field) and on her many, many years as a really, really concerned person who cared a great deal about many, many things.

In a pop-culture saturated world, the Clintons are pop-culture politicians. They don’t have to be anything but interesting, and they will have their following and the press will still gawp in awe. You don’t have to love them, you just have to fall in line. They’ll do the rest.

The Clintons believe in Gatsby’s green light of aspiration – the future is all for them, and you will give it to them, or get out of their way. If you’re quiet about it, they might ask you to be Hillary’s veep…especially if it will save the black vote for her.

And so they beat on, two boats driving hard against the current, and we are all borne back, ceaselessly, into the past.