There are all kinds of reasons to oppose the idea of returning the Clintons to the White House, but this one from Andrew Sullivan isn't one of them:
In the first Clinton term, we had an unprecedented situation where a woman elected to nothing and with no Cabinet rank was given responsibility for the entire healthcare system. She was accountable largely to a man she was married to - not the American people. She functioned not as the traditional spouse of a president, but as a free-floating second president whose line of authority was at once clear (no one dared cross her) and confusing (what legal authority does she have anyway?). As the Clinton term progressed, it appeared that she reverted to a more traditional role - but we do not know since the records of the couple's political arrangement remain sequestered from public scrutiny.
But if we faced a problem in the first Clinton presidency, imagine what we confront in the second. Now, the spouse is actually a two-term former president. What this campaign has revealed is that he intends to play no small role.
The idea that Hillary was unelected and unaccountable is just silly. Or rather, the idea that she was unique in being unelected and unaccountable is silly. We don't elect anyone in the president's cabinet, nor do we elect anyone who serves on his staff. And sure, the cabinet is in fact confirmed by the senate, but the myriad advisors who serve him or her are not. They serve, as we have so often been told over the past year, "at the pleasure of the president," and many of them have precisely the same sort of "free-floating" power that Hillary once had in her husband's White House. There was nothing unprecedented nor unique about this, except for the fact that she was a spouse.
Except, of course, even that wasn't unprecedented.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
