An idle expresident could spell trouble if Clinton wins.
PHILADELPHIA — If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, Bill Clinton will not become a regular at Cabinet meetings, his wife’s advisers say. He will not be invited into the Situation Room. He will step away from his family’s foundation work and may not even have an office in the West Wing, given the undesirable optics of a former president and husband looking over the shoulder of the first female commander in chief.
But the steps Clinton aides are planning to shape his new life do little to address a potentially thornier problem: Historically, when Bill Clinton does not have a job to do, he gets into trouble.
It was during the government shutdown in 1995 that Bill Clinton began his affair with Monica Lewinsky. It was in the early years after he left the White House that his friendships with wealthy playboys became tabloid fodder. Sidelined by Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton went rogue and started lashing out at Barack Obama. More recently, his dinner with the businessman Mark Cuban and his tarmac encounter with Attorney General Loretta Lynch were reminders that when Bill Clinton has time on his hands, he can create dangerous distractions for his wife.
“He loves getting involved in things — no one loves policy and politics more than Bill Clinton,” said Mickey Kantor, a longtime friend and secretary of commerce under Bill Clinton. “He loves, and needs, to have a purpose.”
Putting Bill Clinton to good use, while containing his less helpful impulses, would be a major test for Hillary Clinton as president, given the spotlight and pressure they would be under and her limited ability in the past to rein in his excesses. Hillary Clinton sees him as her most trusted confidant and sounding board on national security issues and the economy, advisers say; one recalled a recent golf outing where Bill Clinton received several phone calls and emails from Hillary Clinton before reaching the 14th hole.
Yet Hillary Clinton is still not sure if she would give a formal position to Bill Clinton or rely on him to help behind the scenes and keep a low profile, aides say. She clearly wants him busy: Appearing on 60 Minutes on Sunday, Hillary Clinton said that it would be “an all-hands-ondeck time” if she wins the presidency and that she would rely on Bill Clinton — as well as President Barack Obama — and “put ’em all to work.” At the same time she emphasized, that she and Bill Clinton would not be co-presidents, leaving open the question of how he would spend his days when he is so close to the levers of power that he knows well.
Given his insights and experience, Bill Clinton could be more capable than anyone else in ensuring the success of her presidency — or he could cast a long shadow over her.
“Their relationship as a current president and a former president would be a very, very sensitive issue early on, and they’d need to carefully work out the rules of the road for the sake of both of them,” said David Gergen, who was a senior adviser to several presidents, including Bill Clinton.
“There’s some revisionist history underway about his presidency that clearly bothers him, for instance, and he may want to rewrite the story of his presidency partly by influencing Hillary’s policies as president,” Gergen added. “They both have to be very careful with that.”
Aides and allies of the Clintons were emphatic that his sole focus would be on helping his wife as president and doing what she asked of him. They played down any controversies over the last several years, pointing out that Bill Clinton had focused on the foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative during that time. But at the same time they acknowledged that Bill Clinton would not be content to sit idly by or speak only when spoken to.
At 69, even as age and health have somewhat slowed him, Bill Clinton still has a strong desire to be in the center of the action, friends say, and his intellectual interests and curiosity remain vast.
One aide says he now spends an extra hour every day reading about world economies, partly in anticipation of helping Hillary Clinton if she asks him to help with economic revitalization, as she has indicated.
He enjoys working abroad — his popularity is sky-high in many foreign countries — and he likes calling up whomever he wants, whenever he wants, especially his wife. But if the Clintons return to the White House, his life will inevitably become more circumscribed, and he will be expected to show the self-discipline that most first spouses have demonstrated.
Friends of Bill Clinton say the smartest way to use him would involve a major but focused appointment, like leading a task force to fight climate change, global poverty, or the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which would be natural outgrowths of his foundation work.
Others, including some who worked in Bill Clinton’s administration, like the idea of him as Middle East peace envoy, given his herculean efforts in the region during his presidency, or as a kind of jobs mastermind focused on rebuilding the most struggling regions of America.
“In some ways the Middle East is the most natural job for him, because he’s so popular with all sides and he spent so much time on peacemaking,” said Martin S. Indyk, a U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration and a longtime negotiator in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Aides to Bill Clinton said Middle East peace envoy was not a job they had heard him express interest in.
They also noted that for every possible job, there is a potential downside — that he would spark tensions with her secretary of state, Treasury secretary, or other cabinet officer; that he might upstage Hillary Clinton or box her in because she might have difficulty overruling him; or that he would become a political target of Republicans once again.
Bill Clinton is excited to return to the White House because he thinks he can genuinely help Hillary Clinton, his advisers say, so relegating him to a narrow role — like being the head of a task force — might leave him wanting more.