Is Bill Losing His Grip?

Vanity Fair spots the stains on Teflon Bill’s retirement clothes
By Greg Atwan,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 2, 2008 10:38 AM CDT
Is Bill Losing His Grip?
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., talks with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, at a Memorial Day event in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Monday, May 26, 2008.    (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

As Hillary’s campaign staggers to a close, a professional Clinton-watcher shines the flashlight back into a familiar face—her husband’s. Bill has had a checkered ex-presidency, Todd Purdum reports in Vanity Fair, as a phalanx of former aides spills about girlfriends (including, maybe, Walter Mondale’s daughter), cash, "cavernous narcissism," and a coterie of dubious friends and associates.

Purdum even speculates that the ex-president’s attacks on Barack Obama, and general crotchetiness, might be a side effect of his 2004 heart surgery, from which confidants say he’s yet to fully recover. Meanwhile, Bubba has surrounded himself with a gang one former aide calls "radioactive." But it’s Clinton’s relentless feeling of infallibility, persecution and righteousness, Purdum argues, that will remain his “unforgivable flaw.” (More Bill Clinton stories.)

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