Retroactive Sympathy for Hillary

Regardless of whether he is remembered as a modern Achilles or just a vulnerable heel, the sight of Bill Clinton sulking in his tent before the November battle is not a pretty one.

As Hillary and Barack prepare to embrace at a Thursday night Washington fund-raiser and the next day in the cunningly chosen town of Unity, NH, the former President spent the weekend faintly praising the nominee-to-be's energy policy and pretending not to hear reporters' question about when he will making his own Obama endorsement.

Bill Clinton's petulance now evokes sympathy for what his wife must have put up with for decades, a self-centeredness that makes Joe Klein's "Primary Colors" seem understated.

If she has the maturity to deal with her disappointment, the least he could do is hide his own and his resentment that Obama's new politics may eclipse his tenure.

As he does his Achilles impersonation, Bill Clinton would do well to crack open a copy of "The Iliad" and look at Agamemnon's advice:

"(T)hough our hearts be sore,
Still let us school our angry spirits down.
My wrath I here abjure; it is not meet
It burn for ever unappeas'd."

Bill Clinton Can't Help Himself

During the Lewinsky days, the word "compulsive" was often applied to Bill Clinton's behavior, and the former President seems intent on reviving memories of the disappointment even his most ardent admirers felt back then.

Now, stumping for his wife in North Carolina after being chastened for his South Carolina comments comparing Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson, here he is doing a little McCarthyesque turn to pile on her opponent's Jeremiah Wright problem by suggesting Obama is something less than a true patriot.

"I think it would be a great thing," Clinton said yesterday, "if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."

What can this man be thinking? Has he been watching too many screenings of "Primary Colors?" Is he so devoted to winning at all costs that nothing else matters? Or is he so jealous of Obama's appeal as a moral figure that he can't help trying to tear him down?

It would be a "great thing," Mr. President, if you would just put a cork on it before you start making George W. Bush look like a figure of probity.

"Primary Colors II"

In the climactic scene of the movie from the Anonymous Joe Klein novel, John Travolta-Jack Stanton-Bill Clinton importunes a young, idealistic African-American young man, "We can do incredible things. We can change this country. I'm gonna win this thing. Look me in the eye, Henry, and tell me that you don't want to be a part of it."

In the sequel, Henry has morphed into Barack Obama, and he is still in it, this time not as part of the steamroller but as its target.

In an early scene of the original, a politician talking to the candidate asks the aspiring First Lady, "You don't mind us talking business, do you?" and she answers wryly, "No, no. How else could I learn?"

As we play out "Primary Colors II," how much has Emma Thompson-Susan Stanton-Hillary Clinton learned? The moral dilemma of the original--whether or not to destroy the opposition with dirt--has been transmuted into a team operation to smear Barack Obama with mud about drug use, doubts about his opposition to the war in Iraq and accusations of racial opportunism.

The 1998 movie was in theaters during the impeachment and left viewers with mixed feelings about the ruthless charmer who connected with Americans by feeling their pain while inflicting some of his own on them. Now the whole cast is back, and after years of the George Bush horror movie, the audience may be looking for something a little more elevating.