Friday, June 08, 2012
Watching Bill Clinton act as Barack Obama's "No. 1
surrogate," in the words of National Public Radio, is as exquisitely
painful as watching a runaway monkey with a paintball gun at a museum.
Most of the pundits have focused on Clinton's motivations
for refusing to read his lines from the White House script. That's
understandable given that Clinton is a one-man reality show whose diversity of
motives makes the ladies of the "Real Housewives" franchise seem
nun-like in their simplicity.
But asking "Why?" of Bill Clinton is a sucker's
game. Sure, he may give you an answer for why he did what he did, but any
answer he gives you will be the verbal equivalent of an ice sculpture:
impressive, but not expected to last long in the light of day. When he said
that Mitt Romney is qualified to be president and had a "sterling business
career," he might as well have dropped the microphone and walked offstage,
"Clinton out."
In Aesop's fables, the scorpion explains to the frog that
he had no choice but to sting him. "Hey, man, that's just how I
roll," the scorpion texted the frog, in what I imagine is the newly
updated version.
But at least the scorpion has the class to own up to his
deed. The funny thing about Clinton is that he just pretends everything is
hunky-dory, like the guy who tries to suppress a grin as he watches you drink
the laxative-spiked punch, or Vizzini in "The Princess Bride" when he
thinks the Dread Pirate Roberts is the one about to die from iocane powder
poisoning. Bill does what Bill does. Just ask Hillary.
For the record, Clinton says he's "aghast" at
all the "flutter" about him wanting Obama to lose. In other news, my
dog is aghast at rumors he likes bacon.
Still, the more interesting question is: Why does Obama
need Clinton to be his Surrogate Numero Uno in the first place?
It's not like Obama and Clinton love each other. Obama's
been dissing Clinton for years, saying Bubba's presidency wasn't
"transformative" and all that. And then there was the unpleasantness
in the 2008 primaries. And yet, Bill remains the White House's go-to-guy.
It's a fascinating weakness of this presidency: Obama has
no reliable surrogates. Joe Biden is the vice president, and 90 percent of his
job description is to be a carnival barker for his boss. But, particularly
since Biden forced the president's hand on gay marriage, it's apparently dawned
on the White House that Biden is less than dependable as a wingman. Sure, he
might begin a statement by saying, "This president saved us from another
Great Depression." But you never know if he'll finish by adding, "My
neighbor has three rabbits," or, "These are not my pants."
The president has tried to be his own surrogate,
personally going on the attack against Romney. But all that does is remind
voters that Obama doesn't want to talk about his own record -- and further
diminishes his tattered bipartisan brand.
That's probably one reason they tried out David Axelrod
as an anti-Romney hatchet man in Boston the other week. But you know your
audition as Obama pitch man hasn't gone well when 90 percent of the media
coverage boils down to either stories about how you were booed by Romney
supporters, or stories about how everyone's asking, "What meth-head
thought Axelrod would be a good surrogate?"
And where are the president's Cabinet secretaries? Todd
S. Purdum, in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, writes about how Obama's Cabinet
-- which was sold as a "team of rivals" -- has turned into a
"team of mascots."
Still, the great thing about mascots -- at least the
human variety -- is that when they're told to dance, they dance. The problem
for Obama is that his Cabinet secretaries are the human manifestations of his
record, and Obama's record isn't particularly popular. Put Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner on TV and you run the risk of someone asking him about the
exploding national debt. Put Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius on a stage and someone might ask about her trampling of religious
liberty, or be reminded of that whole "ObamaCare" thing the president
doesn't want to talk about.
That leaves Bill Clinton -- and a lot more "Clinton
out" moments to come.
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