Hillary

last updated 8 January 2015

Caesar had Brutus. George Washington had BenedictÂ Arnold. Now, said Anne Kornblut in The Washington Post, Hillary and Bill Clinton have David Geffen. During the 1990s, the billionaire co-chairman of DreamWorks was a cozy friend of the first family. He raised $18 million for their causes and let them crash at his Hollywood mansion whenever they were rubbing shoulders with the movie set. But now Geffen is raising money for Barack Obama, Hillary's main Democratic rival, and last week, he attacked the Clintons with the fury of their harshest conservative critics. 'œEverybody in politics lies,' Geffen told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd at a fund-raiser for Obama, 'œbut they do it with such ease, it's troubling.' Calling the ex-president's affair with Monica Lewinsky 'œreckless,' Geffen declared, 'œI don't think anybody believes in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person.' As for Hillary, she's simply inflexible: 'œIt's not a very big thing to say, 'I made a mistake' on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can't.' Â

Team Clinton was livid, said Scot Lehigh in The Boston Globe. Hillary accused Obama's campaign of engaging in 'œthe politics of personal destruction,' and her spokesman, Howard Wolfson, insisted that Obama disavow Geffen's remarks. But all Geffen did was utter publicly what 'œDemocrats usually only whisper privately'—namely, that Hillary carries a lot of baggage from Monica Lewinsky, Whitewater, and myriad other scandals in her past. Naturally, Democrats can only 'œwonder whether they really dare take a second chance' on the Clintons in 2008. After the Clintons' eight contentious years in the White House, the public has had enough of what Geffen dismissively called the Democrats' 'œroyal family,' said John Fund in OpinionJournal.com. 'œAs powerful as the Clinton name remains, most voters view it as stale.' You can understand why Hillary lashed out, said Nicholas von Hoffman in The Nation. Geffen attacked Bill and her as though they 'œwere one person.' But it wasn't Hillary who lied about Monica. Geffen said he broke with the Clintons after Bill pardoned tax evader Marc Rich in 2001, apparently in exchange for a fat contribution to his library. But Hillary wasn't responsible for that, either. 'œConflating' the two is downright 'œdastardly.'

No, it's not, said Rich Lowry in National Review Online. Bill and Hillary have been presenting themselves as partners ever since they moved into the governor's mansion in Arkansas. Whether hijacking the 1993 health-care negotiations or excusing her husband's infidelities, Hillary has always stuck by her man, the better to further her own power. This is a very cynical arrangement, 'œand Hillary has deeply partaken of it.' Anyway, Hillary 'œcan't have it both ways,' said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. If she wants to capitalize on 'œher husband's popularity' to get elected, that's fine. But she can't then get incensed when someone reminds her that their White House years weren't exactly unblemished.