But, given that she’s never achieved a damn thing without him, then what?
By the time Hillary left the State Department in 2013, there wasn’t any question that she was cruising toward 2016 on her own steam, her baggage—Benghazi, Syria, her concussion—refreshingly hers alone. All she had to do was write a memoir, give some speeches, take some photos with her soon-to-be-born granddaughter, hire a campaign team, and she was good to go. So what did Hillary do? She promptly re-ensconsed herself in her husband’s orbit, going to work at his philanthropic foundation and installing herself there so concretely that its name was changed to The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
This week, journalist Peter Schweizer published Clinton Cash, kicking off an investigative cycle that was going to be inevitable when Hillary ran for president: the sifting through of every penny ever given to the Foundation in search of questionable connections to Hillary’s political life, or influence-peddling by either her or her husband. And while so far no one has produced any evidence of professional impropriety on Hillary’s part, the Foundation has been forced to admit failures to disclose foreign donations and errors in tax disclosures. Now that the Foundation has Hillary’s name on it, those failures stick to her too.
Well, it’s true that the Clinton Family motto is: “You can’t prove it!”
The unexpected rechanneling of energy away from Hillary’s personal ambitions and back toward her husband is not without precedent. In fact, contra her reputation as America’s most ambitious, craven, and self-serving First Lady, Hillary’s path has long wound loyally around Bill’s, nearly always to his benefit and her detriment. Returning to his side may be a reflexive habit developed in the era in which Hillary was raised and less well suited to the one in which she wants to become president, but it’s one that she—and he—need to break.
Yeah, right: this crime team will stick together until the bitter, bitter end.
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