Clinton era’s long gone, and yet . . .
So, Bill. So, Hill. What’s the hap? The Clintons: Together still and touring. “An Evening with the Clintons” — that’s the ticket.
Kind of like Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
Or Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.
Or Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Performance couples that have withstood scandal, bickering, betrayals, shame, the plague of celebrity and definitely overexposure.
But the Clintons, their North American 13-city gig is just side by side talkin’, with a moderator lobbing questions. Can they command a stage, in arena venues, telling stories?
Certainly seemed to do so Tuesday night, in front of a clearly adoring crowd, at the Scotiabank Centre, chopped in seat-half for the occasion.
Bill Clinton, sounding raspy, in a charcoal suit and all statesman silver-haired. Hillary Clinton still channelling her sisterhood of the travelling pantsuit, elegant in black. And Frank McKenna doing the Q honours to their As.
Of course, Bill and Hillary Clinton have been the apogee of a power couple for decades. They were very nearly U.S. presidents No. 42 and No. 45. Many have yet to forgive Hillary for not walking in her husband’s footsteps straight into the Oval House, sparing America and the world you-knowwho. Which, Mrs. Clinton recently admitted, still has her “absolutely dumbfounded.”
Oh there was much intellectual banter about Trump, about the midterm results, about née NAFTA, about the U.S. pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and the murder of journalist-cleric Jamal Khashoggi, among the many diverse subjects discussed.
To wit, on Khashoggi, slain and apparently dismembered by Saudi operatives inside the consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
Hillary: “We have a president who is part of the coverup of what happened inside that consulate.”
Take a closer look, she advised, on the commercial interests of the Trump family in the Kingdom and those of his son-in-law’s family, suggesting the larger commercial interests — trade, country to country (which implicates Canada too) is not the actual stumbling block for the Trump administration.
On NAFTA, which Bill Clinton first signed in 1993, he regretted “all the damage” that reopening the trade agreement has caused. “We did some real damage to our relationship with Canada.” Then, looking out at the audience with that seductive twinkle in the eye: “If we did, I ask for your forbearance because we really love you. Most of us.”
Naturally, the midterm results were very much on the dynamo couple’s minds — with the Democrats gaining seven governorships and 40 House seats.
Bill Clinton marvelled at the diversity of Democratic candidates who’d won, including record numbers of women, many of them with backgrounds in the military and national security.
“It became very difficult to dismiss them, to shoehorn them, or to intimidate them.”
All of it quite entertaining. None of it as fascinating as the Clintons themselves.
I must say, even at age 72 and 71, the Clinton marriage, their enduring union, remains a matter of captivation.
Remember that cheesy line in the movie Jerry Maguire? “You complete me.”
It is legitimate to ask if there would ever have been a Bill Clinton without a Hillary Rodham. Hell of a collaboration. He had the charisma and the populist appeal; she brought the policy wonk brains and the blind ambition. At first subsumed in the advancement of his career. And then, as the Bushes entered the White House, followed by the Obamas, carving out her own impressive political niche as senator and secretary of state.
But what in the world are they doing with this Live Nation production, a Clintontimes-two odyssey, which began in Las Vegas a fortnight ago and trucks on into Montreal next, 13 stops in all this year and next, three of them north of the border?
Surely they can’t need the money, although the stench of avarice has long clung to Hillary. According to Forbes, they’ve racked up $240 million (U.S.) since departing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2001, when Bill Clinton claimed they were broke, so much of their personal finances spent defending himself against civil law suits and impeachment.
It is unclear whither the profits from what has been billed as “An Evening with the Clintons” — projected gate $120 million — with tickets topping out at $745.50 per seat, depending on the city. Joint conversations to share “stories and inspiring anecdotes that shaped their historic careers,” as per the event PR bumpf.
As it happens, Michelle Obama is on the promotional circuit simultaneously, but she’s flogging her well-received memoirs, Becoming. And just last week, Monica Lewinsky — very much a part of the Clinton narrative — did the TV show rounds, pumping a docuseries, The Clinton Affair, on the 20th anniversary of his impeachment (in the House).
The Clintons have nothing to sell. Except, I suppose, their abiding relevance, even if the Democratic Party is attempting a generational shape-shifting with an eye on the 2020 elections, the establishment old at loggerheads with the progressive new.
Sheesh, Hillary Clinton has herself alarmed the party by leaving the door a little bit open to running for the party leadership again for a rematch with Donald Trump, thereby possibly usurping her husband’s brand as “The Comeback Kid.”
In an interview last month, asked straight out if she wants to run again, Mrs. Clinton answered with an unqualified “No.” Then she qualified it. “Well, I’d like to be president.”
That was the first query McKenna put to her. She spun the ball back without a definitive answer.
“I’m thinking about standing for Parliament here in Canada. Both Bill and I love your country.”
Seriously, it’s the U.S., the Clintons clearly believe, that still needs them.
The Clintons have always been centrists, even chilling pragmatists, and that worked beautifully for President Bill in the ’90s. That era is long gone, however. And still they’re speechifying, refusing to get off the stage.
“Let’s face it,” sniped superannuated Republican Senator Orrin Hatch. “The Clintons don’t know when to shut up.”
If there’s a battle afoot for the soul of the Democratic Party, the Clintons are viewed by many as anachronisms, to say nothing of a tarnished brand, most particularly against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement. Although #MeToo has lost a lot of steam, both Clintons are being judged retroactively for the Monica thing — Bill, for taking advantage of a 22-year-old exWhite House intern (though Lewinsky indisputably set her beret for the president); feminist Hillary, for standing by her man in the perpetration of what she must have known was a lie.
She was still at that too, recently insisting her husband’s quasi-affair with Lewinsky was not an abuse of power because the young woman was “an adult.”
I think Mrs. Clinton is correct about that. She has been right about a lot of things, actually, from the “vast right wing conspiracy” against her husband, labelling Trump as a Russian “puppet,” predicting he would not criticize Vladimir Putin for his shadowy power apparatus launching cyberattacks against the U.S., for warning that Trump would denigrate NATO and embolden hate groups.
She’s had two years to brook. Both clearly have much they still want to say and audiences apparently to listen.
You know, at the Lewinsky docuseries on A&E reminded me, it was Bill Clinton who, on the campaign trail, first used the resounding clarion call: Make America Great Again. Trump stole it. Democrats might want Bill to fade away. Republicans still want to lock Hillary up.
So they talk and they tour. They are a brand and they complete each other.
Hey, when ex-Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole hung up his political spurs, he became pitchman for Viagra.
You think Bill and Hillary still have sex? With each other, I mean.