Why Bill Hurts the Clinton Campaign

Mark* (or whatever pseudonym he’s going by today… perhaps Manfred M. Manlington… hard saying) has said everything smart that needs to be said about Iowa last night.

Except one thing, which I am, of course, about to say.

Mark notes:

So, what went wrong with the Clinton campaign? I’ve mentioned one or two of their missteps @ Dork Nation already. Having Bill along seemed to carry little weight in Iowa. Normally democrats wet their shorts upon seeing him enter the room and spontaneously burst into chants of “F*** term limits!” Despite what Matthews sees as a “changing of the guard, the end of an era” with the Obama win in Iowa, democrats’ sentimental attitude towards the Clintons haven’t changed. [emphasis mine]

Yes, but did you see Bill last night?

Clinton was giving her speech and I glanced over at the TV and I was transfixed by how bad Bill looks.  He’s skinny and wane.  He looks old and kind of sickly.  Where is the charming, pudgy cad of my youth?

I’m kind of joking, but I’m kind of dead serious.

I know that people have been saying all along that Clinton is not Bill, that electing her would not be a return to the Clinton era of our youths (hell, I may have said something similar earlier this week.)

But the truth is that a lot of folks want to believe that Clinton is the second coming of her husband and that putting her in the White House will be ask close as we can come to putting him back in the White House.  Hell, there are days when I want to believe that.

But the truth is that, when you look at Bill now, you don’t see the man who was President–not that kind of uncontainable charm and smoothness.  He looks frail and vulnerable.

And so, I’m sorry to say, when folks see him, that’s the Bill Clinton people are associating Clinton with.  Not the man in his prime, but the old man.

Clinton’s problem isn’t that she’s not going to be the President Bill was; her problem is that, every time he stands next to her, he reminds people that he’s not going to be the President he was.

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*I should note, for the Hobbsian conspiracy theorists out there that I have, on a couple of occassions, had chatted with Mark.  Because of my ties to Saudi Arabia (my money to TIRRC–their ties to Kasar Abdullah–her ties to the TSU chapter of the Muslim Student Association–the TSU chapter’s ties to the greater Muslim Student Association–the Muslim Student Association’s ties to Islam–Islam’s ties to Saudi Arabia–Saudi Arabia’s ties to the Bin Laden family–the Bin Laden family’s ties to Osama bin Laden) and terrorism, Mark now clearly supports terrorism, which means the Tennessean supports terrorism.  Egad!