The President In the Room

How much of an issue will Bill be when Hill runs? Oh, Puleeze.

He is all the media will focus on, 24/7, for the entire election campaign. Silly season will be far sillier than usual.

What's worse, he can raise money by the truckloads, make her the Dem candidate and the electorate will be, once again, polarized in the general election.

Or, on the other hand, he might just remind the people, who are fed up with hypocritical, faux values of the current manifestation of the GOP, that what was done to him was not a national nightmare. It was not a constitutional crisis, until some in the GOP made it one.

By 2008, people will remember what a real national nightmare is, because we have been going through one for years and the constitutional crisis is soon coming.

The President In the Room - washingtonpost.com:

The spotlight was not Bill Clinton's. It belonged, instead, to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as she celebrated her reelection victory.

So Bill stood poker-faced. He clasped his hands. He held his head high. He clapped when appropriate. He smiled ever so faintly. And he did not move. When Hillary offered thanks to him and turned around to acknowledge him, he did not step forward, did not step to her side. He stayed put, several feet away, as if taking pains to soak up not one ray of the spotlight he so dearly loves but that, now more than ever, must be hers and hers alone.

It was political Kabuki -- Bill Clinton, held in check -- on a night that some observers saw as the start of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Bill is poised to mightily help or deeply hurt his wife's White House prospects. Either way, his impact will be profound as he undertakes the unprecedented role of ex-president turned male campaign spouse to the first woman ever to have a serious shot at the presidency.