Bill Clinton, the Bush Buddy

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What's in it for Bill?
What does Clinton get out of it? A form of acceptance, of course. He was the first modern president to be impeached and came this close (a different speech by Sen. Joe Lieberman) to being convicted. For a man who yearns for approval, the need to return to good graces has got to be overwhelming. First and foremost fraternity guys, the Bushes recognized need — and its uses. They tapped Clinton for their own little Skull and Bones. There can be no more eager pledge.

Clinton didn’t build an ideological legacy. Indeed, he didn’t build the Democratic Party. His politics and strategy from the start were situational, designed to allow him to tack to the White House against rising conservative trade winds. His political legacy was about his personality; rebuilding it is personal, too.

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March 8: Doctors say former President Clinton must have surgery to relieve a rare but not life-threatening complication from his bypass operation, a buildup of fluid and scar tissue below his left lung.
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Assuming his health improves, Clinton is going to need a globe-trotting job to do beyond tsunami relief. U.N. secretary-general is out; no American has gotten that job, or ever will. Bono has the World Bank sewn up, of course. Seriously, if Clinton wants a global mission, and he does, the Bushes can get it for him. I’m not sure they wouldn’t mind turning over the Middle East diplomatic portfolio to him. He knows the history; indeed, he has helped shape it.

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One other Clinton factor: Hillary. A couple of her close friends and advisers tell me that they (and presumably she) are delighted at the former president’s role as Bush Buddy. It puts him above (or at least outside of) the intramural Democratic fray. More important, from their point of view, it gives the Clinton Clan an aura of non-partisanship at a time when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief task is to emphasize her own centrist political roots. She can win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 as a liberal but probably can’t win the White House that way. Bush Buddy Bill is her personal counterweight, proof that she can see the entire panorama of the political landscape.

Who knows? By 2009 the Bushes and Clintons could be together at the White House again — with Hillary as hostess.

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