By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, February 5, 2008; Page A19
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A new Pew Research Center poll found voters evenly divided, with 41 percent saying they "like" the idea of Bill Clinton coming back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and 41 percent saying they "dislike" the notion. When Pew asked the same question in October, 43 percent said they liked the idea and only 34 percent disliked it.
Democrats are generally amenable to Bill Clinton's return, as they were four months ago. Republicans, unsurprisingly, are increasingly opposed. But the most significant change of opinion since October came among independents, whose view has flipped from positive to negative -- a finding that all but screams to the eventual Republican nominee: "Push this button. Hard."
Not that Bill hasn't been doing a thorough job of pushing it himself. His high-profile role in his wife's campaign -- deemed necessary to confront the Barack Obama rebellion -- has invited voters to recall the accomplishments of the Clinton years, but also the debacles. And the way he sought not just to deliver but to control the campaign's message raises the question of what his role would be in a crisis if Hillary Clinton were to become president.
That's the unfair part -- mostly unfair, at least. There's no way that Hillary Clinton would go to the considerable trouble of running for president in order to let her husband make the decisions, as if the Clinton marriage were out of a 1950s sitcom. Hillary has her people -- longtime friends, supporters, aides -- just as Bill has his. If she made it to the White House, her people would be the ones with real power; if his people didn't like it, there wouldn't be much they could do but grumble.
But Hillary Clinton opens the door to all the questions and suspicions about Bill's role. Has she made a single campaign appearance without claiming that "for 35 years" she's been fighting for this, that or the other?
When she tries to portray herself as a battle-scarred political veteran and Obama as an ingenue, she counts the years she spent as first lady in Little Rock and Washington. When she adds the policy successes of the 1990s (but not the failures) to her résumé, she implies that she was part of a co-presidency. It's legitimate to ask whether she intends to be part of another.
Bill, meanwhile, has done little to dispel the impression that he's itching to make a comeback. Until recently his campaign appearances were close to self-parody; he talked almost exclusively about himself, mentioning Hillary as an apparent afterthought. At the moment, he's sticking much closer to his script. But as we saw in South Carolina, with his heedless romp through the minefield of race, Bill Clinton is a hard man to keep on message.
Questions about Hillary's role in the Clinton administration, and about Bill's business and philanthropic ventures since he left office, are not just fair but necessary.
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