My Yale classmate Charles Lipson (now teaching law at Chicago) admires the slickness of Slick Willie over at the Huffington Post.

Bill Clinton’s convention speech was a tour de force. He had a difficult task to accomplish, or rather, several difficult tasks, and he performed them as well as any politician could.

His overriding task was to humanize Hillary and reintroduce her to America, for the 37th time. He spent much of his speech doing that, sharing anecdotes of Hillary as a student, a loving daughter from a good Midwestern family, a young woman willing to take chances, and a new mother raising Chelsea—all while working on important policy issues in Arkansas. He subtly depicted her as the leader in their marriage, or at least an equal partner, suggesting he knew how to become a “First Husband” and was ready for the role. He spoke of their meeting in the Yale Law Library, falling in love, giving birth to Chelsea, raising her, and taking her to college, becoming empty nesters.

In short, Bill Clinton depicted a real person in a real marriage. It is widely assumed, of course, that their marriage is a sham, filled with his cheating and her cold fury, held together only by their political ambitions. As Dennis Miller once put it, “Bill and Hillary’s marriage couldn’t have been any more about convenience than if they’d installed a Slim Jim rack and Slurpee machine at the base of their bed.” Bill’s speech was a long, brilliantly-crafted and perfectly-delivered effort to paint over that image and present a new one. …

In sum, he painted a portrait of someone who deserves to be elected, if you believe the portrait. But do you?

Bill’s whole speech led up to that question, and he did not leave it hanging. Using the Tom Sawyer approach he has honed over decades, he asked it directly. He said that he had just described a person who was very different from the person Republicans described last week. That means one of them is real, one’s a cartoon. The question is, which picture is the real Hillary? He answered that question in his quietest, most sincere tones, biting his lip and inviting empathy.

It was the work of a master salesman. He brought the buyers into the showroom, showed them a “great buy, exactly what you need” and pointed out all the bells and whistles. But he cannot close the deal himself. He’s not running; Hillary is, and she lacks Bill’s rhetorical gifts and zest for campaigning. He loves to touch the flesh; she recoils from it. She is a grating, hectoring speaker and a far less effective campaigner than Bill Clinton (or Donald Trump). Now that Bill has primed the customers, the big question is “Can Hillary close the deal?”

Read the whole thing.

Liberal democrat Maureen Dowd is not exactly thrilled with her party’s impending nominee. Hey! why should we be the only ones with a crappy, hideously undesirable candidate?

[T]he email transgression is not a one off. It’s part of a long pattern of ethical slipping and sliding, obsessive secrecy and paranoia, and collateral damage.

Comey’s verdict that Hillary was “negligent” was met with sighs rather than shock. We know who Hillary and Bill are now. We’ve been held hostage to their predilections and braided intrigues for a long time. (On the Hill, Comey refused to confirm or deny that he’s investigating the Clinton Foundation, with its unseemly tangle of donors and people doing business with State.)

We’re resigned to the Clintons focusing on their viability and disregarding the consequences of their heedless actions on others. They’re always offering a Faustian deal. This year’s election bargain: Put up with our iniquities or get Trump’s short fingers on the nuclear button.

Now she’s complaining. I don’t exactly remember, but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Maureen Dowd was a staunch MoveOn.org supporter, back when Republicans were trying to bring Bill to justice.

Golf Buddies

Erick Erickson has endorsed my own theory.

During the eleven years I ran RedState, I worked to actively squash a lot of conspiracy theories. …

My friend Donald Rumsfeld once said that there really are no conspiracies out there because no one can keep a secret. I tend to think he is right.

But there is one conspiracy theory I’m starting to embrace. I’m really coming to believe that Donald Trump is a Bill and Hillary Clinton operation to get Hillary Clinton elected.

A Republican candidate running for office would spend this entire week attacking Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information.

Instead, Trump has attacked Republicans and praised Saddam Hussein.

A Republican candidate running for office would spend lots of time in swing states. Instead, Trump is focused on New York and Scotland.

A Republican candidate, when asked by the New York Times about serving if elected, would mock the reporter and make it clear how he will serve instead of play golf like Barack Obama. Instead, Trump would not commit to actually serving.

Donald Trump managed to get the Republican nomination in a very crowded field by galvanizing only 33% of the Republican vote, a good bit of which was not even Republican, but disaffected, pissed off voters coming into the GOP to support Trump.

Even after all the other candidates dropped out, Trump could not even clear 44% support in the primary.

Trump ran a primary campaign playing to the worst fears and prejudices of a certain set of Americans and was able to consolidate them against 17 other candidates.

Having spent an entire primary on offense, Trump has not spent a single day doing anything other than defense.

I am beginning to believe Trump is a Clinton operation designed to get Hillary elected. Trump is, after all, the only Republican who ran who was a Clinton donor. He is also the only Republican running who called Bill Clinton to discuss running before he even got into the race.

—————————–

February 25, “What If?”

It would take a miracle effectuated by a political genius of the first water to make Hillary electable, especially in this unfavorable year. The Republican presidential nominee in 2016 has the key to the Oval Office in his pocket as long as he is normally presentable and can walk and talk.

Maybe Hillary can win after all, though, because it just so happens that she is married to a political genius of the first water. …

if I were Bill, how on earth could I possibly cause the unamiable, unattractive, scandal-infested, mean old Hillary to win in this most unfavorable year?

Well, what if… what if that slick old Bill actually did think up a way? How could he do it? Well, there is one way, after all. Just suppose it was possible for Bill Clinton to hijack the GOP nomination.

Suppose Bill Clinton figured out the sole, solitary possible way that he could shove a big, fat monkey wrench into the Republican Party’s Presidential Election Campaign’s works.

Let’s say, for instance, that Old Bill knew another feller, that he had a buddy, a good friend, not in politics actually, but a fellow in some respects kind of like himself, brash, shameless, fond of the ladies, appetitive, hugely out-going, and larger-than-life. Bill’s friend, like himself, would be a wealthy and successful person, a celebrity, a performer, and a chap vigorously able to go after what he wants free of ethical inhibitions.

One can picture Bill sitting down with his pal Donald, and saying, “Donald, old boy, I need you to do Hillary and me a solid. The good news is that the whole thing is going to be one of the greatest larks of all time, and together we are going to make history. This is really going to be a hoot! If it works, you get all the billions of dollars of federal contracts, leases, and subsidies you can use, and Hillary will appoint you ambassador to the Court of St. James. If it fails, sheeeit! you get to be president. This is a no-lose operation.”

And then Bill (behind the scenes) masterminds The Donald’s campaign, knocking out one legitimate GOP candidate after another with shameless insults, abuse, and outright baldfaced lies.

Donald gets the nomination, but it could be that Bill has a plan in mind to sink the Trump campaign right about the end of next September. Photographs of Donald (like Berlusconi) in the sack with some underage girls just happen to fall into the hands of intrepid NY Times reporters in the nick of time. The GOP campaign sinks suddenly in scandal, while Donald smiles over the stories of his sexual prowess, and Hillary coasts in after all.

What if?

—————————–

May 31: “What Happens When the Dog Catches the Car?”:

Suppose it was slightly more complicated:

Donald Trump, last year, is unhappy with the Obama Administration’s mishandling of the economy, foreign policy embarrassments, and the general atmosphere of American decline. He also doesn’t like the Republican emphasis on conservative ideas and he has no sympathy with the rarified idealism of Bush-era Wilsonian Foreign Policy activism. The idea of running in the Republican primaries as a protest candidate has occurred to him.

He would get to ventilate his personal opinions, throw his weight around, and have an impact. Hell, he might win a state or two somewhere. He’d have himself a place in the History books, and as a former presidential candidate he would have a bit more influence and enjoy more respect when he did his business deals. Come to think of it, he would probably even get a little more tail. The aroma of political power does things to chicks.

Trump is reluctant, though, to alienate his pals the Clintons, so he decides to talk it over with Bill. Trump assures Bill that he means Hillary no actual harm, but as Bill thinks about all this, his grin gets wider and wider. Trump running may not really injure Hillary one bit, but it sure could make an unholy mess of the Republican race.

Bill Clinton advises Trump to be himself, and to come out loudly with all the nationalist, protectionist, working-class-hero kind of BS that Jim Webb was peddling in that book of his. What Bill is proposing is, in essence, that Trump should run as a democrat in Republican clothing. The campaign will be all democrat class warfare and promises of special government interventions for Trump’s voters, all served up under a nice Republican sauce made up of flag-waving patriotism.

Obviously, all of this turned out to match the temper of the times, the mood of the low-information voter, perfectly. No one could have predicted that it would sell quite so well, not Bill Clinton, not The Donald himself.

Aren’t all you Trump supporters going to feel dumb, when this is finally confirmed?

Red State explains how the Justice Department two-step worked:

James Comey was facing a revolt among his professional staff. If the case were sent to Lynch for adjudication, which is the usual process, the story would be that the FBI had “cleared” Clinton and therefore Justice was closing the case. In this case, Comey knew that one or more of his senior people, in order to defend the FBI, would either walk (unlikely because no one has principles that are going to cost them a six-figure income) or leak like a sieve (highly likely). This would make Comey the bad guy. It would make him corrupt to the core instead of merely the feckless p***y he’s has been revealed to be.

Unable to go for prosecution, because that would have required integrity, and fully aware that taking a pass on the case would make her unemployable as anything other than a punchline in political jokes for the next generation, she needed to unload this particular ticking time bomb. Unfortunately, she had no real reason to recuse herself from the process as her department was overseeing the case.

Enter the “chance meeting.” Last week this looked like one of the most boneheaded moves ever made by an attorney general. It turned out to be an inspired bit of political theater. This enabled Bill Clinton to throw his old friend a lifeline. By meeting informally and in near secrecy with Clinton, Lynch suddenly had a reason to essentially recuse herself from the case by “accepting the FBI’s recommendation.” …

By deferring to the FBI recommendation, Lynch has pinned the bull’s-eye firmly on Comey and his senior leadership.

Thus we have the FBI Director rendering a scathing public indictment of Hillary Clinton is every particular of the case. In fact, he goes out of his way to demolish everything she has said. And then he, Pontius Pilate-like, walks away leaving the American founding concept of the rule of law in utter shambles.

Secret Service memoir portrays a Hillary unknown to the public.

The New York Daily News served up some pretty juicy tidbits from the new Secret Service tell-all, Gary J. Byrne’s Crisis of Character.

Apparently, Hillary wasn’t the only woman publicly humiliated by Bill Clinton’s philanderings.

[Bill Clinton’s] relationship [with former Vice President Mondale’s daughter Eleanor] really set Lewinsky off, making her jealous and reckless, he writes.

On Dec. 6, 1997, the former intern arrived at the White House gate under the pretense of visiting with the president’s personal secretary. The Secret Service officers guarding the gate understood the special relationship the two had and that Lewinsky had arrived to see the president.

Only this time, Lewinsky was denied entry, according to Byrne, who was stationed elsewhere when she appeared but heard her arrival on his service radio.

“The president is still with another appointment,” Clinton secretary Betty Currie told the gate officer, who relayed the message to Lewinsky.

“Monica, however, still regarded herself quite favorably as the president’s singular mistress. So now she was pissed off. She pressed the officer about the delay and wanted to know why she was left standing in his security booth. He lashed back,” writes Byrne, who was later told of the exchange by a colleague.

“You have to wait. He’s with his other piece of a–. Wait till he’s finished,” the officer told her.

It was clear to all, including Lewinsky, that the president was “screwing with Eleanor in the Oval Office.”

Irate, Lewinsky responded with an unseemly gesture, toward her body, “What’s he want with her when he has this?”

Meanwhile, as Hillary campaigns for the presidency with an emphasis on Gun Control, Byrne’s new Secret Service memoir reveals what no one would ever had guessed: Hillary likes shooting guns and can handle a Thompson sub-machine gun. (!)

What if [the first lady] ran into the president with Monica or with another mistress? Would I have to protect the president from his irate wife — or even from a mistress?” Byrne writes.

And dealing with the first lady’s anger was no small matter, according to Byrne, who describes her as a self-centered, tantrum-throwing, physical abuser.

She also knew how to handle a gun. Byrne found Hillary Clinton took a “surprising liking to firearms, especially a Thompson submachine gun, an original and an American classic, Al Capone’s legendary ‘Chicago typewriter.’”

Sometime after Bill’s 1998 impeachment, and long after Byrne left the White House, the Clintons came by a Secret Service training center and Byrne saw “Mrs. Clinton let loose a spray of man-stopping .45 -caliber rounds into the paper, dirt, and berms of our outdoor one-way range.” Smiling, she fired her next shots “right into the target’s crotch.”

Byrne says the Secret Service discussed the potential for “domestic violence” between the Clintons and worried frequently about how to protect the president from his volcanic — and occasionally violent — wife.

Pals

We obviously do not know what was said, but witnesses reported that Donald Trump conferred by telephone with Bill Clinton just prior to announcing his campaign.

Washington Post:

Former president Bill Clinton had a private telephone conversation in late spring with Donald Trump at the same time that the billionaire investor and reality-television star was nearing a decision to run for the White House, according to associates of both men.

Four Trump allies and one Clinton associate familiar with the exchange said that Clinton encouraged Trump’s efforts to play a larger role in the Republican Party and offered his own views of the political landscape.

Clinton’s personal office in New York confirmed that the call occurred in late May, but an aide to Clinton said the 2016 race was never specifically discussed and that it was only a casual chat.

Read the whole thing.

—————————————————-

Back in Late March, Stephanie Cegielski, a former Trump Campaign Communications Director, confessed that Donald Trump originally had no intention to win.

Even Trump’s most trusted advisors didn’t expect him to fare this well.

Almost a year ago, recruited for my public relations and public policy expertise, I sat in Trump Tower being told that the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count. That was it.

The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy. …

What was once Trump’s desire to rank second place to send a message to America and to increase his power as a businessman has nightmarishly morphed into a charade that is poised to do irreparable damage to this country if we do not stop this campaign in its tracks.

I’ll say it again: Trump never intended to be the candidate. But his pride is too out of control to stop him now.

You can give Trump the biggest gift possible if you are a Trump supporter: stop supporting him.

He doesn’t want the White House. He just wants to be able to say that he could have run the White House. He’s achieved that already and then some. If there is any question, take it from someone who was recruited to help the candidate succeed, and initially very much wanted him to do so.

—————————————————-

MSNBC reported on an interview with Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman and chief strategist, which disclosed that Donald Trump has no intention of personally doing all the work of the presidency, even if he wins.

Manafort sat down with the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman for a fairly long interview, and while the two covered quite a bit of ground, there was one exchange in particular that stood out for me.

The vice presidential pick will also be part of the process of proving he’s ready for the White House, Manafort said.

“He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do. He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO.”

This is no small acknowledgement. For months, it’s been clear that Trump has no meaningful understanding of public policy or even how government works at a basic level. By any fair measure, his ignorance and incompetence about affairs of state is unlike anything Americans have ever seen in a major-party presidential candidate. The question has long been when we can expect Trump to get up to speed.

And the answer is, he has no intention of doing any such thing. Day-to-governing and overseeing the executive branch apparently represent “the part of the job he doesn’t want to do.”

—————————————————-

All these little details support the theory I advanced back in February, that the Trump candidacy was never intended to win.

Suppose Bill Clinton figured out the sole, solitary possible way that he could shove a big, fat monkey wrench into the Republican Party’s Presidential Election Campaign’s works.

Let’s say, for instance, that Old Bill knew another feller, that he had a buddy, a good friend, not in politics actually, but a fellow in some respects kind of like himself, brash, shameless, fond of the ladies, appetitive, hugely out-going, and larger-than-life. Bill’s friend, like himself, would be a wealthy and successful person, a celebrity, a performer, and a chap vigorously able to go after what he wants free of ethical inhibitions.

One can picture Bill sitting down with his pal Donald, and saying, “Donald, old boy, I need you to do Hillary and me a solid. The good news is that the whole thing is going to be one of the greatest larks of all time, and together we are going to make history. This is really going to be a hoot! If it works, you get all the billions of dollars of federal contracts, leases, and subsidies you can use, and Hillary will appoint you ambassador to the Court of St. James. If it fails, sheeeit! you get to be president. This is a no-lose operation.”

Suppose it was slightly more complicated:

Donald Trump, last year, is unhappy with the Obama Administration’s mishandling of the economy, foreign policy embarrassments, and the general atmosphere of American decline. He also doesn’t like the Republican emphasis on conservative ideas and he has no sympathy with the rarified idealism of Bush-era Wilsonian Foreign Policy activism. The idea of running in the Republican primaries as a protest candidate has occurred to him.

He would get to ventilate his personal opinions, throw his weight around, and have an impact. Hell, he might win a state or two somewhere. He’d have himself a place in the History books, and as a former presidential candidate he would have a bit more influence and enjoy more respect when he did his business deals. Come to think of it, he would probably even get a little more tail. The aroma of political power does things to chicks.

Trump is reluctant, though, to alienate his pals the Clintons, so he decides to talk it over with Bill. Trump assures Bill that he means Hillary no actual harm, but as Bill thinks about all this, his grin gets wider and wider. Trump running may not really injure Hillary one bit, but it sure could make an unholy mess of the Republican race.

Bill Clinton advises Trump to be himself, and to come out loudly with all the nationalist, protectionist, working-class-hero kind of BS that Jim Webb was peddling in that book of his. What Bill is proposing is, in essence, that Trump should run as a democrat in Republican clothing. The campaign will be all democrat class warfare and promises of special government interventions for Trump’s voters, all served up under a nice Republican sauce made up of flag-waving patriotism.

Obviously, all of this turned out to match the temper of the times, the mood of the low-information voter, perfectly. No one could have predicted that it would sell quite so well, not Bill Clinton, not The Donald himself.

And now Trump is approaching the position of the the dog who actually caught the car he was chasing and then has no idea what to do with it.

How Mencken would laugh!

Pals

The American people tend to get tired of listening to most presidents after two terms, and by then they are usually itching to throw the incumbent party out of the White House and give the other team a chance. Barack Obama has not succeeded in pulling America out of the recession which began with the housing crash in 2008, and he has not endeared himself. He has really just polarized and embittered the country by his arrogant left-wing partisanship.

So it doesn’t take a crystal ball to know that in 2016 Fate favors the Republican presidential nominee. On top of all that, the democrat party bench is extraordinarily short of candidates. They have the dark horse (not even actually a democrat until very recently) Hippie socialist from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, every American’s crazy Jewish communist uncle. And they have Hillary.

Barack Obama was Fortune’s gift to the democrat party: attractive; well-spoken with a good vocabulary and a pleasing announcer’s voice; well-mannered and skilled at delivering the impression of calm, reasonability, and moderation; and, best of all, black and not merely black, but black laundered and pressed into the most excellent Ivy League form by Columbia and Harvard. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t save the 2008 election for poor elderly John McCain. He found himself running with a stock market crash, hanging like an albatross around his own and his party’s neck, and against the Flavor-of-the-Month, a shiny new Pop Culture sensation roughly as popular in 2008 as the Beatles in 1964.

Hillary Clinton in 2016 is obviously completely different from Barack Obama in 2008. Obama entered the campaign surrounded by imaginary butterflies and unicorns. Hillary enters on her broom, accompanied by flying monkeys. Barack Obama was so lovable that every adolescent girl in America, male and female, young and old, had a crush on him. NBC’s Chris Matthews famously found his leg trembling with nearly homoerotic adoration of Obama. Nobody’s leg will be quivering for the old and wrinkly Hillary.

Obama was the Magic Negro, the wise friend from another race whose acceptance of you proves that you are exceptionally worthy, and whose aid brings about your survival or your victory in your quest. Hillary is every man’s shrewish wife, the pot-throwing termagant who drives all of America out to the nearest saloon to drown our collective sorrows. Hillary is the mean old lady, heading up the Ladies’ League For Social Reform that is going to ban everything that’s fun. Obama was Chingachgook, Queequeg, and a younger version of every Morgan Freeman character. Hillary is Lady Macbeth.

It would take a miracle effectuated by a political genius of the first water to make Hillary electable, especially in this unfavorable year. The Republican presidential nominee in 2016 has the key to the Oval Office in his pocket as long as he is normally presentable and can walk and talk.

Maybe Hillary can win after all, though, because it just so happens that she is married to a political genius of the first water.

Read the rest of this entry »

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

-—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby