Why Clinton Didn't Run in 1988
Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 01:35:12 AM PDT
Poiticalwire is now featuring the following as its "Quote of the Day":
"I came within a day of announcing, because most of the governors were for me and I had been a governor for six years. And I really didn't think I knew enough and had served enough and done enough to run."
-- Bill Clinton, in an interview on Political Capital with Al Hunt to air tonight on Bloomberg TV, on his near run for president in 1988. Clinton was suggesting that Sen. Barack Obama is not experienced enough to seek the presidency.
www.politicalwire.com
Ahh, so that's why Clinton decided against running for president in 1988. It was because he felt like he wasn't experienced enough.
So then this explanation, which he actually gave at the time, was just out and out bs?
Mr. Clinton said his main reason for not running - a concern about the effect his campaign would have on his 7-year-old daughter, Chelsea - had deep roots.
''My father died, before I was born, in a car wreck, and my mother remarried when I was 4 and it was a fairly difficult and stormy relationship. And then my stepfather died when I was 21. I think that makes me a little more concerned than I would otherwise be about the impact of prolonged absencses.
''I didn't want to take a chance on Chelsea,'' he said. ''I just didn't want her to grow up wondering if somehow she was in second place for either one of us. Because I was afraid it would affect how she related to everyone else for the rest of her life.''
There was an overlap between the personal and the political, both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton said, since children's issues would have been a centerpiece of a Clinton campaign for President. Another 'Cruel Irony'
''One of the big problems right now in this country is that people are not paying enough attention to children,'' said Mrs. Clinton, who is 39. ''And it's pretty hard for us to go out selling that message and not pay attention to our own child. That's a contradiction that we also weren't very comfortable with.''
And it had nothing to do with this? link
According to Carl Bernstein's new book "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton," in 1988 then-Governor Bill Clinton considered ending his marriage so he could be with his mistress. Bernstein writes that Betsey Wright, Clinton's chief of staff, attributed this to one of our favorite topics here at LifeTwo: midlife crisis:
Wright noted, "there was an adrenaline cutoff immediately, and the funk after that. I mean, he just thought his life was over. There was nothing else for him to do. And he was nutty . . . reckless. I couldn’t get his attention in the office of the governor. He was tired and burnt out on being governor. There wasn’t anything to capture his interest in the job. He really got careless with fooling around."
Wright concluded toward the end of 1988 that Bill was "having a severe midlife crisis."
Governor Clinton apparently sounded out fellow governors and others about the impact a divorce might have on his prospects, including the presidential run he longed for but had already had to abort once in the aftermath of the 1988 Gary Hart scandal. Had he followed through, it's difficult to imagine his party nominating and his country electing a recently divorced man who'd left behind his wife and child (Chelsea Clinton was eight in 1988) for his mistress.
Of course not. It was just that, in his infinite humility, he'd felt that he was lacking sufficient experience.
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