A remarkable slap at Bill Clinton's vicious partisanship has just been delivered from Davos. John Gapper, writing in the Financial Times is blasting Clinton's efforts to tarnish the Clinton brand globally.
The Bill Clinton we have come to know, as Mrs Clinton has taken the political lead as a New York senator, is an elder statesman. Having seemingly placed the anger and humiliation of the late stages of his presidency behind him, he has travelled the world trying to improve life for millions of people.
The main vehicle for his outreach is the Clinton Global Initiative, which holds its annual conference in New York. There, Mr Clinton cuts a benevolent figure. Glasses perched on the end of his nose, he reads out details of each organisation that is being given the stamp of approval and calls its leaders up on stage for a certificate and often a hug.
While at the CGI this year, I accompanied the leaders of Camfed, an education charity that was the focus of FT’s Christmas appeal, to have a photo taken with Mr Clinton. He was, as usual, late but all of the organisations there indulged him: they thought a moment in his presence and a photo of the occasion was worth the tedious wait.
This Bill Clinton is inspiring. This one said in a speech last July: “If you think we’re hard-wired for aggression and hatred and division, all the latest brain science shows . . . we are capable of learning well into our 60s and 70s. The world doesn’t have to be the way it is. It can be otherwise if we imagine it and work for it.”
But this Bill Clinton has not been seen since Barack Obama emerged as a serious threat to Mrs Clinton’s hopes of the presidency. Instead of a non-partisan philanthropist, US voters see a partisan operative getting red-faced with anger as he bitterly rails against Mr Obama for, in Mrs Clinton’s words, “raising false hopes” that the US can be otherwise.
During his 1996 presidential re-election campaign, Mr Clinton said on a visit to Nevada: “I’m on the verge of finishing the last campaign I’ll ever be in unless I run for the school board one day.” Nevada should have been so lucky; he was back last week, lashing out at a reporter who asked him about legal action by Clinton supporters to block caucuses at Las Vegas casinos.
That followed his nasty performance in the New Hampshire primary, where he called Mr Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war “a fairy tale”. He has become so aggressive that he and his wife, who clumsily suggested that President Lyndon Johnson deserved more credit than Martin Luther King for 1960s civil rights reforms, have alienated some black leaders.
Maybe Mr Clinton is so emotionally caught up in getting his wife elected (and absolving his infidelities) that he cannot help himself. Or maybe it is a calculated political gamble in which he plays bad guy to her good woman and stirs up Latino voters to block Mr Obama’s progress. Either way, it does not reflect well on him.
Bubba's antics are not playing well globally. At some point, the folks who have come to adore him overseas will realize that they were being played by a smooth-talking but ultimately ruthless politician all along. Oh wait, they already are beginning to realize it. Gapper points out that if Hillary should win the nomination but lose the election, Clinton may be dead as a global brand.
See, there is a bright side to all of this.
