Over at The Huffington Post, blogger Dana Kennedy -- a former entertainment reporter for ABC, Fox News, and MSNBC -- asks a common question: "What if Bill Secretly Wants Hillary to Lose?" She claims she's been rooting for Hillary to win, but sadly, Bill is the star and Hillary is the "brainy plain Jane" who's been wronged by Bill's lack of discipline:
People hate Hillary so much that it's easy to chalk up their marriage as a codependence-fest. Certainly nobody was a bigger enabler than Hillary. I always hoped it wasn't proof she wasn't a total chump, but because she saw the big picture: herself as president.
But I have a vivid memory of a 15-minute interview I had with Hillary when I was covering her for the AP during the 1992 Democratic Convention in New York.
We were alone together in the back of a van going to the next stop. My impression of her was tough, brittle, super-smart. At the very end of my interview, I asked her about Gennifer Flowers, since that was the Clinton scandal du jour in 1992.
I was amazed when her face and entire demeanor completely changed. She seemed instantly wounded. Far from being mad at me for asking the question, or keeping her game face on, she seemed truly vulnerable. It did not seem fake.
She drew back from me and said, "It's not true!," almost like a teenage girl. Her voice was higher than usual and it sounded like a cry.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Bill is just eternally conflicted, not subconsciously Machiavellian, and two old pros who love a fight will figure out a way to make Hillary the second Clinton "Comeback Kid."
But if I had to bet, I wouldn't roll the dice for a Clinton victory. In fact, I'm wondering if the dice Hillary rolled so long ago, when she sacrificed her own career in Washington to join Bill in Arkansas, is coming up snake eyes.
And I wonder if her insistence so long ago that she was no Tammy Wynette, standing by her man, is coming back to haunt her.
Bill Clinton got his moment in the sun, eight years actually. Will Hillary get her shot?
The lyrics of "Stand by Your Man" are telling.
"You'll have bad times," Wynette sang. "He'll have good times."
