Bill Clinton on Hillary: Sometimes 'I wish we weren't married. Then I could say what I really think.'

Bill Clinton says he wishes he wasn&#039;t married to Hillary &quot;sometimes&quot;.

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

last updated 9 February 2016

On the campaign trail in New Hampshire on Monday, Bill Clinton implied his wife's candidacy is cramping his style as a freewheeling ex-president.

"The hotter this election gets, the more I wish I were just a former president and just for a few months not the spouse of the next one," he said. "Because, you know, I have to be careful what I say."

"Tonight my job is to introduce Hillary," he later added. "Sometimes when I'm on a stage like this, I wish we weren't married. Then I could say what I really think."

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The former president has lately been on the attack against Clinton's competitor in the Democratic primaries, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). While it is normal for a candidate's spouse to serve as a surrogate on the campaign trail, Bill Clinton's own political and personal history has made his role more complicated.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.