Bill Clinton—the Big Dog—Gets Fixed It was a ‘subdued’ former president who turned out for Hillary in New Hampshire this week. By William McGurn
http://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-clintonthe-big-doggets-fixed-1451953476
It was a muted Bill Clinton who stumped for his wife in New Hampshire on Monday.
Only a few weeks back, Mr. Clinton was thought to be Hillary Clinton’s “secret weapon.” Well, he has just made his first two appearances of the 2016 campaign—and the Associated Press describes him as “subdued,” while the New York Times says he “seemed to be on a tight leash.”
Not to mention how adrift he looked when a reporter asked him about Donald Trump’s slams about his treatment of women.
It’s not the first time the Big Dog has been fixed. Back during Mrs. Clinton’s first run for the Democratic nomination, her husband was stung by accusations of racism after he seemed to diminish Barack Obama’s landslide victory in the 2008 South Carolina primary by pointing out that Jesse Jackson had won that primary before. Mr. Clinton would later complain the Obama team had “played the race card” on him.
Now it’s Mr. Trump who’s spoiling the primary season. After Mrs. Clinton accused The Donald of sexism, he responded as he always does: He escalated. If Mrs. Clinton was going down that route, he said, he was going to bring up all the female skeletons in her husband’s closet.
Mr. Trump has been at it ever since. “I hope Bill Clinton starts talking about women’s issues so that voters can see what a hypocrite he is and how Hillary abused those women,” he tweeted on Saturday.
Yet even before Mr. Trump picked up on it, the contradictions between Mrs. Clinton’s feminism and her behavior were being challenged. At a New Hampshire campaign stop in early December, a woman asked her, “You recently came out to say that all rape victims should be believed? But would you say that about Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones?” The reference was to three women who have respectively accused Bill Clinton of rape, sexual assault and exposing himself.
Now the Clintons must expect such moments throughout her 2016 campaign. Nor can Mrs. Clinton brush them off as her hubby’s problem, especially given that many of the women who accused Bill of sexual assault also say it was Hillary who orchestrated the smears against them.
We saw the disruption this can cause for Mrs. Clinton on Sunday at another New Hampshire rally, when a local Republican woman tried to bring up the issue. Mrs. Clinton shut her down by calling her “very rude” and saying she would never call on her. Plainly it’s not a persuasive response, and such confrontations will always make news.
Mr. Clinton is now facing the heat himself as he gets into the race. It can’t help that his past misbehavior is resurfacing at the same time Bill Cosby, once a beloved figure himself, has just been charged with sexual assault. The comparisons between the two men are too obvious.
So is the question about the different responses the two men have received. Even before Bill Cosby was charged with a crime, the allegations against him led to his being stripped of honorary degrees, booted off boards and seeing his name replaced on buildings. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, is feted and rakes in the millions.
All this would be academic except for one thing: Mrs. Clinton needs the Obama coalition, especially its young women, to propel her into office. Unfortunately, as a recent New York Times feature about a Democratic mother and her daughter recently reported, “younger women are less impressed” by Mrs. Clinton than are older women.
The Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund calls this an enthusiasm gap. Two weeks ago the group released a poll it says should be a “wake-up call” for progressives. It shows that many of the most-Democratic voters, including unmarried women, are less enthusiastic about voting in the coming election than conservatives. It’s hard to see how Mrs. Clinton will get them excited so long as her own treatment of women is an issue.
Let’s stipulate that Mr. Trump has his own issues here, from his whining about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly after she asked him tough questions in the first GOP candidates debate to his cracks about rival Carly Fiorina’s face. Even so, Mr. Trump is betting that the American people will distinguish between aggressive male boorishness and outright sexual abuse.
Some Democrats are saying Mr. Trump’s strategy will backfire, citing polls from the first Clinton presidency showing the public saw Mrs. Clinton as a spouse wronged by her husband. They are kidding themselves.
For one thing, Americans now know that the Clintons were often lying to us about her husband’s accusers. Exhibit A? When Hillary appeared beside Bill on “60 Minutes” to deny an affair with Gennifer Flowers that her husband would later admit to under oath.
As Christopher Hitchens once put it, Bill Clinton didn’t lie about sex. He lied about women. The Clintons’ problem today is that they are being called on these lies—and neither he nor his wife has a good answer.
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