Imagine, if you will, that a prominent corporation is holding final talks for its CEO position and one of the leading applicants invites her spouse to speak on her behalf at the last interview.
Welcome to the “Billary” campaign for Brand America.
To whomever coined the Billary term, my nod for the apt neologism. It should be a place of shame and public scorn — for the Hillary Clinton campaign specifically and for women in politics in general — that Frau Clinton cannot run a campaign for the most influential position in world politics without her husband holding solo press conferences that snipe at her political opponent.
In Monday’s ABC Morning News interview, Obama responds, “You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling.”
That’s an understatement.
There’s no doubt that President Clinton’s time on the campaign trail has directly influenced the race. Indeed, CNN reports that yesterday’s exit polling in South Carolina may have created a net negative effect that handed the state to Obama. And one Charleston reporter for the Sunday Times went so far as to say “Bill Clinton’s emergence as the leading attack dog for his wife raises the vexing question of whether Hillary can win and govern without him.”
…a position that the Republican Party will be sure to exploit should Billary win the Democratic nomination.
Disturbingly, Frau Clinton’s campaign remains not only unapologetic but defensive of President Clinton’s meddling.
Enough already!
It is either time to put “Billary” aside and have Hilary Clinton re-emerge as a qualified candidate on her own merits or for Democratic voters to decide that she evidently doesn’t have what it takes to become President of the United States of America.
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Bonus link: Bill Clinton says, “Screw it. I’m in.” (The Onion, 23 Jan 2008)
