OK, Now It's What Bubba Should Have Said

Last week I took a trip down imaginary lane to write about the sub-brouhaha-level issue of "why no one will explain the difference between a Democrat and a socialist".  This came up when Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, fell all over herself trying not to answer the question, and then last week Hillary Clinton, the anointed presidential candidate from the Incompetence Party (if she is not in prison by then), fell all over herself avoiding the question.

Nice guy that I am, I gave Mrs. Clinton three great paragraphs worth of the answer that she should have given, or could have given.  It's one that would have pulverized the topic in a puff of dust, and allowed her to go on talking about her candidacy and plans for the future running for president in November, if she is not in prison ... OK, you get it.  Seriously, she didn't need to be chicken and waffle on the topic.

So now another member of the Clinton family is walking around not answering a question that has now been posed to him at least twice. Now in fairness, at least Bill Clinton took the question from a reporter in a setting other than a scripted interview with only pre-submitted questions for canned answers and a few off-the-cuff ones.  Hillary might want to try that, at least as practice for the debate where four of five of the possible Republican candidates have the debating chops to rip her candidacy into little pieces.

The question, in its multiple forms, is essentially whether Bill Clinton's repeated extramarital affairs and, particularly, the multiple accusations of forcible sexual advances to women not his wife, are "fair game" for the campaign reporting of his wife.  I would have even gone a bit further in the question myself.  That's because there is a fair amount of chatter at the extent to which Hillary, out of one side of her mouth, screamed bloody murder at her husband, while out of the other side of her mouth, she coordinated character assassination of his victims.

As a pathological liar, she has two or three more "other sides of her mouth", but we'll let those go for the moment.  Besides, this is about Bill.

Now, the actual answer to the question is, of course, that it is fair as all heck to bring up the issue of his abuse of women and possible criminal assaults of women.  It is fair, for a few reasons:
(1) He is not just a presidential candidate's spouse expected to do the Mamie Eisenhower thing; he is a former president expected to have a huge impact on the conduct of a Hillary Clinton presidency (if she is not ...).  It would not have been about Melania Trump, say, but it sure as heck would be about Bill Clinton.
(2) Hillary Clinton's candidacy is predicated on her possession of a uterus.  When you say that women claiming rape or sexual assault are to be believed (except at the University of Virginia, but I digress), but remain steadfastly, or at least legally, married to a presumed serial sex abuser, someone needs to answer for the dichotomy -- and it won't be Hillary.

However, since not answering the question means it will keep getting asked, and Donald Trump will keep running blistering, withering ads pointing out that dichotomy, Bill needs an answer.  So here goes.

"As you are aware, and as I have publicly admitted while I was president, I have been a less than faithful husband.  I am a flawed human being.  But I am also a forgiven one, and I owe my wife the respect that a flawed and fallen man should give.

"I realize that in the contention of a presidential campaign, people running against my wife may choose to make an issue of actions that I have taken and I understand that.  It is politics.  Politics is an arena in which a lot of attacks are thought to be fair, that we would never countenance in the rest of life.  I have been shamed by my actions, and if others wish to try to attack my wife by trying to speak about what I have done to her, well, I can only say that I understand."


Simple as that.  Why do I give these people words they ought to come up with themselves, eh?

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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