It’s like this: In early 2017, about three years from right now, we (or some of us) will be heralding the victorious outcome of the dirty, bare-knuckled election of Hillary Rodham Clinton who may drop her maiden/middle name during her campaign to capitalize once and for all on the name-brand recognition of her miraculously forgiven husband, whose past and most infamous whorish behavior will surely be a talking and a sticking point for President Mrs. Clinton.
And just because she’s stalling her official announcement while her supporters scurry about amassing her campaign war chest does not mean the rest of us cannot see what is coming.
I mean, were you really surprised that Jay-Z and Beyonce opened the Grammy Awards or that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr “reunited”?
(Will the Carters cozy up to the Clintons like they did the Obamas, or was that star-fucking reserved solely for a similarly glamorous, powerful, beautiful black couple? #Justasking.)
Clinton’s stalling is weak hype, designed to make us watch.
When I watch the Clintons all I see is the probable return of a disingenuous regime, one that started the whole housing market mess of sub-prime mortgages while they and the Gores danced stiffly to Fleetwood Mac singing “Don’t stop thinkin’ about tomorrow. Don’t stop. It’ll soon be here.”
For Hillary Clinton, though, it won’t be better than before because not only will she have to — rightfully so, I think — explain and probably defend her husband’s whorish ways as a way of saying the Democrats are holier and less loutish than Republicans, she will also have to convince voters ol’ Bill won’t be (again) running the White House, which is itself a slap to the face of a powerful and smart woman like Hillary Clinton.
I do trust her intelligence and her proven abilities to lead but, boy, when things go wrong on her watch, they really do go wrong.
Intending to buy 220 acres of land in the Ozarks, the Clintons join forces with James and Susan McDougal in 1978 to form the Whitewater Development Corporation; together they borrow a little more than $200,000. Over a long period of time — including then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton’s election as governor, his subsequent lost re-election bid and an eventual winning re-election — the Whitewater group falls apart.
As it does, James McDougal, Bill Clinton’s former economic developer, buys at least two small banks. The second, Madison Guaranty, is investigated by the feds in 1985 after McDougal held a Clinton fundraiser at Madison Guaranty to pay off a $50,000 political debt and it’s discovered some of the money was improperly withdrawn from depositors’ accounts.
That same year McDougal hires Rose Law Firm, Hillary Clinton’s firm, to defend his savings and loan against federal charges. By 1988 witnesses from Hillary’s law firm testified she requested the destruction of Madison Guaranty land contract files; she also asks McDougal for power of attorney so she can sell off existing Whitewater lots to offset outstanding bank obligations.
McDougal is acquitted in 1990 and the Clintons take the White House in 1993.
By summer 1993 when the Whitewater/Rose Law Firm scandal comes up in the press, Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster files three years of delinquent Whitewater tax returns.
Foster is found dead in a Washington, D.C., park in July 1993 and though it is ruled a suicide, federal investigators are denied entrance into Foster’s office, but Clinton aides enter, and it’s been widely believed those aides removed files that would’ve been damning to the Clintons.
In January 1996, Kenneth Starr subpoenas Hillary Clinton in a criminal investigation to determine whether Whitewater/Rose Law Firm records were illegally withheld from investigators, marking the first time the wife of a sitting president is subpoenaed.
All this Whitewater dirt will return to haunt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
So will the way the attacks on two United States missions in Benghazi, Libya, were handled while Clinton was secretary of state, a tragedy Clinton herself calls “my biggest regret.”
Two diplomats and two C.I.A. operatives were killed on Sept. 11, 2012 at the diplomatic compounds, calling into question President Obama’s understanding of Al Qaeda’s reach, the failure of international intelligence and the State Department’s use of lax security at that compound. (An investigative report from The New York Times later found no direct connections between the attack and Al Qaeda.)
After the attack, the State Department initially said the assault was randomly carried out by rebels and could not have been predicted. However, a report released by the State Intelligence Committee said the attack could have been prevented if the State Department had ramped up its security and if the C.I.A. had shared its knowledge of the existence of C.I.A.-run outposts with the U.S. military.
All of this fell under Hillary Clinton’s umbrella of responsibility and if she wants to walk onto a level electoral field, devoid of special excuses and backpedaling for women who run with the big dogs, then she must take at least two major ass-whippings on her Tailhook trail to the White House.
These will be similar in heat to the ones doled out to President Obama about his birthplace, his pastor, his parentage, his possibly socialist leanings, his prior drug use and even his funny name.
The main differences will be that President Obama entered the fray without the political favors Hillary Clinton surely has stockpiled; he also didn’t have the long reach of the Clinton Brand, which means he didn’t know where any of his political foes might have buried (literal and figurative) bodies. Obama had only the massive support of the young, the disenfranchised, the beleaguered and of celebrities.
None of these amounts to the heft of all-out political power, the kind the Clintons have always finessed and manipulated for their own gain.
If America wants Hillary, it will again get Bill because the Clintons are more than merely a married couple taking turns in the spotlight pursuing their career dreams.
The Clintons are partners in crime.
All hail the thieves.
CONTACT KATHY Y. WILSON: [email protected]
