Vanity...? Enough for Everybody.

Commentor ‘Dawg was amazed we didn’t have anything to say regarding the Vanity Fair piece on Clinton by Todd S. Purdum, husband of former Clinton press Secretary Dee Dee Myers.

So we took the time to read through it and our summary reaction is a collective shoulder shrug, as in, “this is news?”

Half the story is devoted to Clinton’s unsavory associations… associations with renowned skirt chasers and his “bimbo eruptions”. Purdum takes to task Clinton’s staffers and handlers for not being able to control these associations, affairs and general free-wheeling. Like they would have a prayer against this “force of nature”?

Purdum also takes us back to the Clinton Presidency itself, documenting the instances that demonstrated the man’s colossal ego, narcissism and selfish cruelty but insists that somehow over the past few years and particularly during these primaries that Clinton was a changed man… rash, bitter, and vindictive.

He’s wrong. Clinton didn’t change but the circumstances did. Some of the very traits that put him in the White House: the self-obsessed drive and ambition and this overwhelming desire to relate to and be needed by others, politically speaking (“I feel your pain”), are the same traits that did irreparable damage to his wife’s campaign.

Should Hillary Clinton have somehow managed to overcome the many obstacles and mistakes that her campaign made and wound up the Democratic nominee, this article would not have seen the light of day.

We’ve been stunned at the turn the press has done on their former darlings, seemingly overnight. As if we fell into a Rip Van Winkle-like slumber a couple of years ago only to come-to 3-4 months ago and wonder if Hillary had changed parties. As we alluded, though, people and institutions don’t change, only the circumstances.

Bill Clinton was forgiven much because he was a winner. No longer.