I know they’re married and all, but does Bill Clinton really think he’s helping out his wife with comments like the following?
Of his wife’s recent travails, he said, “the caucuses aren’t good for her. They disproportionat…

That’s why the theory has merit whether or not it is true.

There aren’t many men who would want their wives to best them at what they considered their greatest glory in life, are there? If anything it would trivialize the office once held in so high esteem.

But with the Obama wave, and its underlying Mickey Mouse loyalty theme, and feel good politics as pie in the sky worth groping for, it’s possible that the office has already been trivialized to a point beyond repair - and that would fit in with the Bush administration’s disrespect of it and its Unitary Executive theory.

The Presidency may definitely be in crisis but it isn’t Bill or Hillary who put it there. Instead where electability has been so great a concern in 2008, it has fallen victim to popularity, not proficiency or competence or character as the pathway to its powers.

If Clinton is as politically savvy as claimed, it might be the Presidency as an office which needs salvage, not necessarily his wife’s proposed place in it. That would be a fitting role for any past President as its current status is anything but admirable in its current state.

Tinkering has its privileges, but there are still some things which probably not be tinkered with. The Presidency may be one of them.

Here is one theory from The Agitator (via the Adam Smith Institute blog):
…

LMAO! Instead he’s using pure vapor about “change”!
Gimme a friggin’ break. He’s hardly the poster child for saying things of hard hitting substance, with specifics based on principles.

Thompson probably came the closest to doing that consistently. Hell, even Hillary does a better job, although of course I think she’s dead wrong in most things.

So you’re one of those fabled “nuanced” thinkers who seems incapable of actually comprehending anything beyond than bumper-sticker complexity…

About medieval and later nastiness in the name of Christianity, I specifically addressed that in my original comment. It’s only the cartoonish anti- view of Christianity that is stupid enough to treat it as monolithic. Google the Scholastics, for one thing.

Also, the terrible things done in Christian Europe were in no way unique to it, but rather, the reformation & rejection of the worst of those abuses came from *within* it, from certain strands of Christian thought. Admittedly, once it began spreading to the gentiles, formerly purely jewish Christianity became somewhat Hellenized, with another later leavening during the Renaissance, but if you’ll recall your history, to the extent that Greeks and Romans thought about equal rights, they only applied to… fellow Greeks and Romans. It was Christianity that planted the seed for universality.

As to “theocracy”… *nowhere* do the Gospels say to establish an earthly “Kingdom”, other than in the hearts of fellow believers. There is certainly *no* counterpart to the totalitarianism that is Islamic sharia.

FWIW I did *not* say that the concept of individual freedom is exclusively a Christian idea (matter of fact I think I specifically said the contrary). Nor do I think that “liberty” –or “ordered liberty” as the Founders sometimes preferred to put it– logically depends on Christianity. But it is absolutely true that Christianity served as the… the scaffolding if you will that brought the modern notion of individual rights & liberty to life. To insist otherwise is willfully ahistorical. For God’s sake, read Jefferson & John Locke.

I’ll also add that I am NOT one of those idiots who want to insist that America is specifically “Christian” (or worse, bibilical) in its founding — like you, if I may presume, I think the ideals of the Founding Fathers transcend Christianity… but to refuse to acknowledge that those ideals are at least “of Christianity” in terms of philosophical origins, as again lying about history.

Actually, US history has a pretty good parallel to our disagreement about Christianity — you would seem to hold that the existence of slavery up thru the Civil War somehow refutes “We hold these truths…” rather than being a failure, an exception, to live up the ideal.

You’ll also note I said nothing about totalitarianisms such as communism in my comment about the origins of “progressive” thought. Again, I’m talking about historical development. Actually, communists try to create a secular literal version of that “Kingdom”, a paradise on earth that so got you going, that I pointed out Jesus never said to try to do, sure as hell not by force. Of course that has always ended in horrible failure becasue it ignores real human nature (and therefore economics). FWIW, a Christian might say that the damage due to progressive & socialist thought finding its extreme manifestation in bloody communism, is because those original lofty ideals *were* unmoored from Christianity.

Like, dude state the obvious first level dynamic, yet miss the main one? Bill can’t campaign for Obama, but if Obama becomes president, Bill’s legacy as statesman goes way up, whereas if his ugly old frigid wife becomes president, he’s toast. It’s about time FEMINISM came to end end, just as Obama would put and end to the LEFIST race card, since he’s spurned the old extortion-based race bating riot mongers like Janet or Jesse Jackson, and Cop Killer hero JT (who? I dunno!).

Look, Jesus Christ was a black guy, O.K.? Clinton wants a real legacy, that I as a libertarian would support, as long as he keeps that SOCIALIST (vs. centralist) busybody tag-along wife of his on the sidelines. Obama might screw the country up, but there’s some case to be considered, that he might instead, KICK F*CKING ASS IN THE MIDDLE EAST *F*O*R* *R*E*A*L* (”take it to Pakistan), as well as end, forever, the Left’s “race card” *AND* ISLAMIC echo and maybe, finally once again make our country’s very stability be a notion of no longer allowing male presidents to be elected who have a quoted “we are the president” attitude.

How the leader of the free world had to grovel just to get some twenty year old ass! No wonder was not able to vaporize Obama. Hilary said stop. She wanted to do it, 2009, as she was teaching her decidedly ugly daughter to rise to power by pandering to hippie dudes who spoke of running for local office.

Clinton/Gore 2020, after Obama fails to find a fake crisis to play off of. Wait though. Maybe Obama is one of the few politicians in history that can rouse a crowd without needing propaganda?

If the thoroughly socialist Field Marshall Rodham can be accurately described as “neocon” for supporting a war and letting government run roughshod over civil-liberties, then so also can Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

At least we don’t have to stare at her chipmunk cheeks on a dime yet.

==//==

Rescuing the very last copy of this off Google groups, which has silently “disappeared” much of the contents of alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater:

Dr. Seuss Meets Mr. Clinton

I did not do it in a car.
I did not do it in a bar.
I did not do it in the dark.
I didn’t do it in Fort Marcy Park.

I did not do it on a date.
I did not ever fornicate.
I did not do it at a dance.
I did not do it in her pants.

I did not get beyond first base.
I did not do it in her face.
I did not do it in a holy snit.
I did not do it in an oven mitt.

I never did it in a bed.
If you think that, you’ve been misled.
I did not do it with a groan.
I did not do it on the phone.

I did not cause her dress to stain.
I never boinked Saddam Hussein.
I did not do it with a whip.
I never fondled Linda Tripp.

I never acted really silly
With volunteers like Kathleen Willey.
There was one time, with Margaret Thatcher,
I chased her ’round, but could not catch her.

No kinky stuff, not on your life
I wouldn’t, even with my wife.
And Gennifer Flowers’ tale of woes
Was paid for by my right-wing foes.

And Paula Jones, and those State Troopers
Are just a bunch of party poopers.
I did not ask my friends to lie.
I did not hang them out to dry.

I did not do it last November,
But if I did, I don’t remember.
I did not do it in the hall.
I could have, but I don’t recall.

I never did it in my study.
I never did it with my dog, Buddy.
I never did it to Sox, the cat.
I might have–once–with Arafat.

I never did it in a hurry.
I never groped Ms. Betty Currie.
I never got wood for Mary Mahone.
I never wanted Ms. Wise to blow me.
I never chased Dee Dee Myers.
I never, with a pair of pliars.

I’ve never tasted brown sugar.
Or holed Jerry Parks with a Luger.
There was no sex at Arlington.
There was no sex on Air Force One.
And Danny Williams is not my son.

I might have copped a little feel
And then endeavored to conceal.
But never did these things so lewd,
At least, not ever in the nude.

These things to which I have confessed.
They do not count, if we stayed dressed.
It never happened with cigar.
I never dated Mrs. Starr.

I did not know this little sin
Would be retold on CNN.
I broke some rules my Mama taught me.
I tried to hide, but now you’ve caught me.

But I implore, I do beseech
Do not condemn, do not impeach.
I might have gotten a little tail
But never, never did I inhale!