Zigzagging New Hampshire in a bid to salvage his wife’s campaign yesterday, Bill Clinton insisted he’s every bit the sensitive, modern male who could deal with taking orders from a female president in the White House he once ran.
“I really don’t care what I’m called,” he gushed when asked at a stop in Peterborough whether he’d go by “first gentleman” if Hillary Clinton were elected. “I just want to be called upon to do something to help her.”
But if Bill is so comfortable with Hillary in command, why did he keep referring to her being carved up?
Asked by one potential voter to share his fondest Hillary moment, Bill choked up as he replied, “The day our daughter was born.” But then he went on to describe in detail how Hillary had to have a C-section and was “so scared” that she begged him to stay with her during the operation because “they are going to cut all over me.”
Maybe Bill was just trying to be helpful. Maybe all those undecided voters who found her haughty might now consider her a warm-and-fuzzy person—even though fear of surgery might not be the first quality folks seek in a commander-in-chief. A Bill spokesman insisted the ex-prez had no idea his wife was fighting back tears at an event on the other side of the state while he was detailing her C-section.
Or maybe Bill just wanted to describe how he rescued the woman who would lead the free world. After learning the hospital banned husbands from attending C-sections, “I went and told the doctor, look…this woman is tough as nails” but needs her man by her side, he recounted. “So I went in and held her hand and watched my daughter being born and we talked through the whole thing. We ended up actually changing the hospital policy that night.”
First husband in the operating room, just like he’d be the first husband in the White House – talk about a trailblazer!
Minutes later, Bill was back to the knives, saying his wife was the best candidate because after eights years of surviving Republican attacks as first lady, “she’s not fresh meat.”
“I mean, they’ve already vetted her, and beat her up, and torn her from limb to limb,” he said with a grin. “And the girl still looks pretty good.”
And we thought Barack Obama was the target.
-- Letta Tayler in Manchester, N.H.