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Clawing for a Legacy
Bill Clinton campaigns for Hillary Clinton in Missouri.
(By Charlie Riedel -- Associated Press)
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Except for the spousal loophole. Hence his desperation, especially after Hillary's Iowa debacle, to rescue his only chance for historical vindication -- a return to the White House as Hillary's co-president. A chance to serve three, perhaps even four terms, the longest in history, longer even than FDR. The opportunity to have dominated a full quarter-century of American history, relegating the George W. Bush years to a parenthesis within Clinton's legacy.
It was to save this one chance, his last chance, to be historically consequential that Bill Clinton blithely jeopardized principle, friendships, racial harmony in his own party and his own popularity in South Carolina.
Why not? Clinton knows that popularity is cheap, easily lost, easily regained. (See Lewinsky scandal.) But historical legacies are forever.
He wants one, desperately. But to get it he must return to the White House. And for that he must elect his wife. At any cost.
Why was he out of control in South Carolina? He wasn't. He was clawing for a second chance.
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