“He loves getting involved in things – no one loves policy and politics more than Bill Clinton”, said Mickey Kantor, a longtime friend and secretary of commerce under the former president.
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When he first met his wife, then Hillary Rodham, Bill Clinton said he was too nervous to talk to her – so she spoke to him.
Clinton gave a long-winded recitation of wife Hillary’s early resume.
That was the extent of the “political baggage” that the reporter dared to mention.
The former president, though, will take care not to eclipse Clinton if she is elected, but will rather take the role “of a supportive spouse who brings a lot of assets and substance, and good memories from American voters”, said Richardson.
“This woman has never been satisfied with the status quo, ” he said. She is not exactly spontaneous or likely to veer off-script. Look for fireworks there from some Sanders supporters.
The former president also defended his wife’s carpetbagging in winning the 2000 New York Senate election. NBC national correspondent Peter Alexander is inside the Wells Fargo Center, he’s got more on that. “You registered this morning!'”
Those issues were seized upon by protesters who followed the Clintons across the country loudly denouncing the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 1994 crime bill – two key pieces of Bill Clinton’s legacy.
“Speeches like this are fun”, Clinton said.
Earlier in the day, Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic Party’s nomination for the November 8 election, coming back from a stinging 2008 defeat in her first White House run and surviving a bitter primary fight to become the first woman to head the ticket of a major party in US history.
JENNIFER PALMIERI [CLINTON CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR]: His value is in being able to tell the American people about his wife.
“You know what, she’s not like that!”
Abigail Adams famously asked her husband John Adams in 1776 to “remember the ladies”, and after he became the country’s second president, she was seen as having significant influence on his political thinking and decisionmaking. Presiding over an economic boom in the 1990s, a talented speaker, delivering for President Obama in 2012.
“I want somebody who will be candid and will tell me, ‘Hey, I don’t agree with this, ‘ or, ‘Could you think about it somewhat differently?’ I don’t think I have all the answers”, she said. Still, Clinton occasionally veers off script.
As secretary, she competently handled many challenges, but produced no big accomplishments or evidence that she is a major strategic thinker.
ALEXANDER: And more recently, taxiing into trouble, popping into Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s plane. It will be his 10th time addressing the DNC.
ALEXANDER: But in ’92, it was the man from Hope’s shining moment, accepting his party’s nomination. She said Clinton can’t change her feelings now.
ALEXANDER: Eight years later, basking in his accomplishments.
Yet what was right for the Bill Clinton years of 1993 to 2001 no longer seems so right. You bet we are.
This is not to make a fetish of Rauch’s 14-year rule – such rules-of-thumb are made to be broken – but it speaks to how utterly, drearily, inescapably familiar Hillary Clinton is.
The former president may encounter protests yet again Tuesday night – this time from Sanders supporters who are still fuming over internal Democratic National Committee emails released by WikiLeaks that appear to show party officials strategizing how to harm the Vermont senator politically during the primaries.
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“It’s imperative that progressives and conservatives alike see the film to understand Hillary Clinton’s unprecedented auctioning of State Department policies”, said Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC and the co-writer and executive producer of the documentary.
