Hillary and Bill
Team Johnson-Clinton stumps for Hillary - Roger Simon - Politico.com
I just posted a comment in response to the above piece by Roger Simon from Politico, and I thought I would share it with PMjA Peeps.
Roger:
You missed the key feature of the signing money anecdote. You mistakenly write the scene as an oppositional moment:
"They also have money, which is why some people stick out dollar bills. At a grocery store in Des Moines recently, Bill Clinton signed a dollar bill, saying it was legal to do so, while Hillary Clinton declined, saying it was not. "
But that's not how the moment was originally reported:
"[O]n the way out of the store, a woman asked Bill to sign a greenback. Bill obliged, while pointing out "this isn't legal" to the amusement of folks standing nearby.
"A few minutes later, the same request was made to the senator, who said that she couldn't do it. "I can't sign money. That's illegal. I'm so sorry," she said"
(http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1207/The_Clintons.html)
This is the key. Hillary and Bill AGREED that signing money was illegal, but Bill signed the money DESPITE this conclusion, and Hillary refused BECAUSE of this conclusion. This gets both of them at the heart of their respective characters:
Bill will break a law if it makes someone like him. In fact, he'll POINT OUT that he is breaking the law FOR YOU so that you will like him more.
Meanwhile, Hillary is so anal she won't step a micron out of line to make anyone happy for any reason.
She's robotic without any sense of fun; he's almost Bacchic. She's continent, he's incontinent, and while both may be nice people, neither seems Virtuous. Rather than balancing each other, tempering each other, they seem only to isolate and magnify what is bad about each other. She makes him seem more and more like an unruly child, and he makes her icier and more mechanical.
-Fritz
