Army Bob: Has Ex-President Bill Clinton lost his edge?

by Robert M. Traxler

Former President Clinton is working hard to see Senator Hillary Clinton elected to the presidency. The problem is that the President Clinton of today is not the same man he was 16 years ago when he left office. It will come as no surprise to the regular readers of this column that I am no fan of President Clinton; however, the old soldier in me dictates I must respect the office of the President of the United States.

President Clinton is getting old and his mind is not the steel trap it was two decades ago. The quote below, although said in an unscripted moment of jest, is an example of his political skills waning away:

“I think it’s fine that all these young students have been so enthusiastic for her opponent and say, ‘It’s all good, just shoot every third person on Wall Street and everything will be fine,'” in speaking to a small afternoon audience in Washington Heights.

The President William Jefferson Clinton of old would not have been addressing a small audience anywhere; he always drew very large crowds. Also, he never would have been as out of tune with the Democratic primary voters as to defend the people at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets. Take their money use their jets, eat their food, drink their liquor, be entertained by their women, but never openly and publicly defend them.

To dehumanize the folks who work on Wall Street, the advocates of class warfare must refer to them in a way that makes them less than human and truly evil. A dedicated Progressive will tell us our prisons are full of innocent people and Wall Street is full of true criminals who are guilty of oppressing the “common person,” whoever that is. No American is common in my eyes.

President Clinton also revisited Secretary Clinton’s sniper fire in Bosnia story (proven to be untrue) at a time when her campaign staff had felt the story was buried and forgotten. He also referred to the policies of the last eight years as “awful,” forgetting he is campaigning against Senator Sanders and not President Obama. A younger President Clinton was a master of political speak, and would have never have made the rookie mistakes he has so far in his wife’s campaign.

The sad truth is that we are all getting older and we are all losing some physical and mental abilities; it is upsetting to see President Clinton embarrass himself so publicly. Perhaps Senator Clinton’s campaign is truly scared by Senator Sanders and wishes to maximize effort to defeat him, even at the expense of doing major damage to President Clinton’s image.

The truth is Mrs. Clinton is a slam-dunk for the nomination; she has a lead even without the super-delegates, and with them she cannot lose in the rigged process. Both parties have rigged the primary process; however, the Democrats trust the democratic one-man, one-vote process even less than the Republicans, a very hard thing to do. The political class in both parties feels they are the adults, and you and I are to be treated as children by the superior and wiser political class.

The primary process is a mess, no denying that — but what would be better? The primaries are not a democratic process, they are a political party’s process and the parties get to set the rules. Primaries are not required to follow the Constitution, as they are not “the government.” So again, how do we do it better? Do we return to the smoke-filled rooms of old where only the party boss picked the candidates? That process picked some very good and very bad national leaders.

Should we federalize the primary system and put the government and not the parties in charge? With all its warts, our current jumble of state rules is probably the best system available and we do not want the Congress and our current administration screwing things up even more than they already are.

The primary system has been in effect since 1912; it is not perfect, but let’s not destroy the good in a vain search for the perfect.