. . . "Hillary\u2019s Traction"@en . . . "by user Don Pesci We often say here in America that politicians with a past are carrying a lot of baggage into office with them. Hillary Clinton\u2019s baggage, as everyone who has not slept through the past two decades may have realized, is husband Bill. And no, I am not referring to what the press used to call in Bill\u2019s Monica Period the president\u2019s sexual \u201Cpeccadilloes.\u201D We like to turn our pages on our pasts, and America is after all the land of second chances. Most Americans were quite willing to forgive Bill his \u201Cindiscretions\u201D about five minutes after the cigar incident. The few women in Bill\u2019s past who were crying \u201Cinfidelity\u201D \u2013 and in at least one case \u201Crape\u201D \u2013 were dismissed, even by the feminists, as implausible publicity hounds."@en . "by user Don Pesci We often say here in America that politicians with a past are carrying a lot of baggage into office with them. Hillary Clinton\u2019s baggage, as everyone who has not slept through the past two decades may have realized, is husband Bill. And no, I am not referring to what the press used to call in Bill\u2019s Monica Period the president\u2019s sexual \u201Cpeccadilloes.\u201D We like to turn our pages on our pasts, and America is after all the land of second chances. Most Americans were quite willing to forgive Bill his \u201Cindiscretions\u201D about five minutes after the cigar incident. The few women in Bill\u2019s past who were crying \u201Cinfidelity\u201D \u2013 and in at least one case \u201Crape\u201D \u2013 were dismissed, even by the feminists, as implausible publicity hounds. No, all that lies in a past that, despite William Faulkner\u2019s misgivings, is over. Faulkner said the past was not over, \u201CIt is not even past.\u201D Hillary\u2019s big problem is with husband Bill\u2019s warmongering. In a review of two recent books on Hillary, \u201CHillary Clinton: Her Way\u201D by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. and \u201CA Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton\u201D by Carl Bernstein, Christopher Hitchens briefly remarks on the problem. Hillary cannot quite denounce President George Bush in the tone used by his most virulent opponents without also throwing a brick at husband Bill. How to defend Bill\u2019s hawkish analysis of Middle Eastern jihadists, and even the incorrigible Saddam Hussein, while denouncing Bush is a conundrum that other politicians running for the presidency have settled by making the requisite public confession, which begins with \u201CRegrettably, I voted for the legislative bill that gave George Bush authority to prosecute the Iraq war,\u201D contains a grudging admission of fallibility, \u201CBut I was wrong,\u201D and proceeds to the now ritualistic denouement, \u201CTherefore I propose a timeline for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq by\u2026,\u201D and here it is best to leave the date of surrender hanging upon some reasonable condition \u2013 just in case. This now well worn path has been trodden by lesser presidential luminaries such as Chris Dodd and others, but Hillary has refused to join in the fun, some suppose, because Bill\u2019s and her own past -- she was, after all, the co-president -- is standing in the way of her ambition. __NOEDITSECTION__ From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki. From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki."@en . . . . . . . .