If Bill goes to the UN, Hillary will have to forget about White House

THE Clintons - they haven’t gone away, you know. This week, Bill made yet another visit to Ireland. Last Friday he was in the Vatican, reporting on his work to promote international solidarity with victims of the tsunami.

And next year? That’s when Kofi Annan steps down as secretary general of the United Nations. The word is that Bill wants to succeed him.

It could make sense. For Bill, at any rate. He’s 58 and in relatively good health despite his recent bypass surgery. Globetrotting suits him. The adoring crowds would still turn out to greet him in his new UN role. And although he would miss the pay cheques (he currently makes up to a hundred grand on a single speech), he surely misses the big stage.

A UN role would give him the chance to leave a lasting positive legacy after the scandal of his second presidential term. The UN needs a major figure in the wake of its oil-for-food scandal and other embarrassments, including alleged sexual misconduct among UN employees in Africa. Clinton may seem an unlikely man to tackle such institutional crises, particularly the African one just mentioned. And there would be the reluctance of many countries to countenance an American secretary general.

But Clinton has the ‘it’ factor. His appeal even extends to countries hostile to America. But what to do with Hillary? One thing is for sure, you can’t have a husband and wife running the United States and the United Nations at the same time. That would seem too much like world government.

Who gives way? It all depends on how realistic Hillary’s chances are of becoming president. At present she is only talking of winning back her senate seat in 2006.

But her aides recently confirmed that she had invited supporters from Iowa to Washington for a political fundraiser. The Iowa caucuses are the first shots in the campaign to get the party nomination for the presidency.

The fact that people are talking about her candidacy shows why she could be so formidable. In a world where celebrity almost guarantees popularity, that counts a lot. There’s even the ‘Hillary Meter,’ a twice-monthly poll gauging her popularity among the public.

Hillary’s high profile role as ‘co-president’ during Bill’s two terms means she can assuage the fears of those Americans - and they may still be many - who might have doubts about putting a woman in the top job. There is the sympathy factor - she was the wind beneath her husband’s political wings, and he let her down. And there is her reputation for political astuteness.

In recent months she has adopted centrist positions on many issues. She described abortion as a “sad, even tragic choice;” embraced the role of religion in addressing social problems; tacked further to the right by complaining about the influx of illegal aliens; and her views on foreign policy are not far from Donald Rumsfeld’s. She supports a muscular US role in the world.

But despite Hillary’s apparent strengths, there remain big questions about her ability and character. For example, does she really have the political genius that people credit her with? The US political system, like our own, requires politicians to lead the public while, at the same time, responding to the public mood. These objectives often conflict. The trick is to have the political style to keep people’s trust while you tack with the wind.

Politicians must be flexible and pragmatic to survive, but they mustn’t make it too obvious. Hillary’s problem is that everything about her screams political calculation. Political pundits may admire her Machiavellian streak, but the true Machiavellian is the one everybody thinks is a saint.

Nobody thinks Hillary has a halo. Her actions instantly betray her political ambition, and that fact alone will cause people not to trust her.

If she does decide to run for the presidency, you can expect all the dirt of the Clinton years to be dug up again. This time, the spotlight will focus exclusively on her role in the administration.

Her attempt to reform health care was perhaps her most famous failure. It was her project, but a refusal to compromise with a Republican-dominated Congress meant that the proposal never even came to a vote in either the Senate or the House of Representatives.

Oddly enough, Hillary must also take her share of the blame for the way the Monica Lewinsky affair devastated Bill’s presidency. Bill was, as they say in the Deep South, “a hard dog to keep on the porch.” But if it hadn’t been for Hillary’s insistence on secrecy in other matters, the whole sorry saga might never have unfolded the way it did.

When the Washington Post started asking questions in December 1993 about the Clintons’ role in the Whitewater land deal, the president’s advisers urged him to disclose the necessary documents. The president agreed, but Hillary didn’t.

The documents would have disclosed details of investments she had made and, although there was nothing criminal, they had the potential to embarrass her. So, on the advice of her lawyers, she stood firm. As a result, media coverage of Whitewater intensified, rumours starting flying, and there were calls for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate. Eventually, the Clintons caved in. They turned over all the Whitewater papers to the Justice Department and they felt forced to call for an independent counsel.

The appointment of the independent counsel, Edward Fiske, led to the opening of a broad front of investigation into the Clintons. Even before Kenneth Starr took over. The point is, if Hillary had been more forthcoming about Whitewater, there would have been no independent counsel. There would have been no Monica Lewinsky revelations since Lewinsky had nothing to do with Whitewater. There would have been no impeachment therefore. And Bill Clinton would have enjoyed a highly productive second term.

Expect all that to be rehearsed if Hillary runs for president. Probably in books like Edward Klein’s ‘The Truth About Hillary,’ due out in September.

“Just as the Swift Boat Veterans convinced millions of voters that John Kerry lacked the character to be president,” goes the publishing blurb, “Klein’s book will influence everyone who is sizing up the character of Hillary Clinton.”

Expect Klein to discuss the many nasty blow-ups between the Clintons in front of White House aides.

“In the middle of a conversation,” wrote former adviser David Gergen, “she would launch a deadly missile straight at his heart and just before it hit, the missile would explode, the shrapnel hitting the staff. He would respond and tempers would flare. Get over it, I was told. I never did. Those conversations were demoralising, deepened the division between the Bill and Hillary camps, and made one tiptoe around the principals. Keeping the presidency on track became a heck of a lot harder for everyone.”