The Janus Face that Is Bill-Hillary Clinton

It is about Bill Clinton. It always has been about Bill Clinton. In a rather disconcerting way, Bill and Hillary Clinton are the two Janus faces of the same person -- when the face turned toward us is friendly and at ease, it's Bill; when the face we see is unknowable and full of suspicion, it is Hillary. Right now, Hillary is trying to borrow Bill's friendly, open face to convince America to elect her President. This has left Bill with Hillary's face and this week he proved he is capable of being the closed, suspicious Hillary. ~~~~~ Bill Clinton, in  an interview with NBC News last weekend, was asked about Hillary's and his relationships with donors. Bill answered : "People should draw their own conclusions. I'm not in politics. All I'm saying is the idea that there's one set of rules for us and another set for everybody else is true." ~~~~~ First, if Bill Clinton is not in politics, then Pope Francis is not a priest. Bill Clinton was, is and always will be defined by his political genius. Whether one agrees with his brand of politics may be debated but Bill Clinton's prowess is recognized worldwide and for him to deny that he is in politics is just plain ridiculous. We could agree if Hillary had said that. She is not a political animal. She cannot seem to relax while a TV camera or crowd is in front of her. She fears disclosure and hides herself as much as she possibly can, often getting into political trouble because of it -- Whitewater, Benghazi, emails, refusal to cooperate fully with Congress, all bear witness to her fear of personal exposure. It was Hillary who, while President Bill was battling against being brought down by the Monica Lewinsky affair, raised the spectre of "a vast right-wing conspiracy" aimed at destroying them. It was surprising, then, to hear Bill tell NBC : "All I'm saying is the idea that there's one set of rules for us and another set for everybody else is true." Bill was wearing Hillary's face - using the 'pity me' play to avoid addressing the real question. ~~~~~ Bill went on to claim that there has been a “very concerted effort to bring the foundation down.” Get real. Bill Clinton has leveraged his foundation into a money-making machine that is better known than any other presidential foundation. During his NBC interview, Bill said that he was proud of the work of his foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative that had leveraged billions of dollars in assistance to 43 million people in 180 countries.” But his Hillary face came through when Bill went on to decry the "double standard in American politics" that puts him and his foundation under intense scrutiny while political organizations, like the ones headed by conservative Koch Brothers that don't have to disclose the source of their contributions, draw far less attention. That's when Clinton insisted : “All I'm saying is the idea that there's one set of rules for us and another set for everybody else is true. The guy that filled out the [990 tax] forms made an error. Now that is a bigger problem, according to the press, than the other people running for President willing to take dark money, secret money, secret from beginning to end.” Just to take a reality check -- Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign hopes to raise $2.5 billion, not exactly peanuts, and if she refused all Super Pac money, which is what Bill was talking about when he mentioned secret money, she would need a $10 contribution from EVERY American...every man, woman and child. ~~~~~ Then, to explain his unfathomable assertion to NBC that he would continue taking $500,000 fees for speeches, even though his wife is a presidential candidate, Bill said, "I gotta pay our bills." This from a man whose net worth is estimated to be $80 million. He sounded a lot like Hillary's infamous "we were dead broke when we left the White House" comment. But, Bill went on, as if to try to pre-answer the criticism he knew would follow : “There is no doubt in my mind that we have never done anything knowingly inappropriate in terms of taking money to influence any kind of American government policy." 'Knowingly' - a lawyer's word - is the key here. Was Bill creating a new "depends on what is is" -- saying that unknowingly he and Hillary may have engaged in influence peddling? He added, "That just hasn't happened.” As his final fiat to NBC, Bill Clinton said that he had turned down some donations while Hillary was Secretary of State, but declined to elaborate : "Since I turned it down, I don't need to talk about it." For good measure, Clinton quoted his wife as telling him, “No one has ever tried to influence me by helping you.” That is an assertion meant to put the Clintons above reproach by quoting their own words. -- just like Hillary saying she had decided which 30,000 emails to erase and America should trust her to have done it honestly. ~~~~~ Another reality check. The International Business Times reported yesterday that investment bank Goldman Sachs paid $200,000 to Bill Clinton for a speech to its clients just three days before Hillary made a speech at State praising Goldman’s involvement in sending US students to travel in China. A few months later, Goldman began lobbying the State Department on various international issues. Also on Monday, the The Federalist website challenged a claim by the Clinton Foundation, made in a tweet last week, that 88% of its expenditures “go directly to our life-changing work.” The Federalist noted that unless you torture the meaning of the words “direct” and “life-changing” -- torturing words is a Bill Clinton specialty -- it’s hard to make the foundation’s numbers add up. In 2013, according to The Federalist, tax returns suggest the foundation spent about 10% of its money on charitable grants. The vast majority went to operational expenses. The $8.8 million spent on charitable grants was dwarfed by the $17.2 million spent on travel, rent, and office supplies. Between 2011 and 2013, the foundation spent only 9.9% of the $252 million it collected on direct charitable grants.” ~~~~~ Finally,after Hillary announced her candidacy, the Clinton Foundation said it would modify its policies throughout the campaign to provide more transparency and to limit foreign donors to just six western countries. “It’s an acknowledgement that we're going to come as close as we can during her presidential campaign to following the rules we followed when she became Secretary of State,” Bill Clinton told NBC News. But, we now know that the Clintons and their foundation ignored all the rules they had agreed to in 2009. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Bill Clinton hinted that he might even step down as foundation head if Hillary is elected President : “I might if I were asked to do something in the public interest that I had an obligation to do.” That is a Bill Clinton statement to conjure with. It suggests the very real possibility that in 2017, while it would be Hillary out in the public eye doing presidential things, it would be Bill behind the scenes, directing Hillary, pulling strings, and deciding worldwide issues in private meetings with his network of crony leaders - Qatar, Oman, Morocco - and many others. It would be the latest and perhaps the final step away from constitutional government in which Americans, through elected leaders, have a voice in policy decisions. If Hillary Clinton is elected, America would no longer know, or perhaps be able to politically influence, the person who is making policy decisions or be aware of the hidden reasons for making them. That is the real danger of a Hillary presidency -- the Janus face that is Bill-Hillary Clinton.