The upcoming book Game Change reportedly contains three revelations that will further soil the reputation of former President Bill Clinton, whose reputation took a big hit during his wife Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful campaign against Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination.
Since Obama’s election, the unsinkable Bill Clinton has regained much of his former stature among Democrats in general and is still highly popular in public and corporate appearances here and around the globe. But as further proof that what is once secret will come out eventually, three new revelations will be tidbits likely sited by future historians:
1. The book contends Clinton had a long-term affair and that Hillary Clinton’s campaign worked to keep a lid on it.
Bill Clinton was involved in a long-term affair, and Hillary’s campaign set up a “war room within a war room” to deal with the feared disclosure and all problems related to Bill’s “libido.” The book doesn’t identify the woman.
2. The book reportedly answers a long-standing mystery: why did the late Sen. Teddy Kennedy turn so totally on Bill Clinton? The answer: because Clinton made a comment less PC than Harry Reid’s about Obama:
Why Sen. Kennedy was offended about his conversation with Bill Clinton (page 218):
“Recounting the conversation later to a friend, Teddy fumed that Clinton had said, A few years ago this guy would have been getting us coffee.”
3. Hillary Clinton almost declined accepting the Secretary of State post due to her husband and his ire towards Obama:
When Barack Obama asked Hillary Rodham Clinton to be his secretary of state, the former first lady reluctantly confessed she had a big problem taking the job — her headline-grabbing hubby, the authors of a new book on the 2008 presidential campaign claim.
Clinton at first rejected Obama’s offer flat-out without explanation, but when the then-president-elect called a second time, she admitted her dilemma, one of the book’s authors tells “60 Minutes” tomorrow night.
“At that point she says, ‘There’s one last thing that’s a problem, which is my husband. You’ve seen what this is like. It will be a circus if I take this job,’ ” John Heilemann,who co-wrote “Game Change” (HarperCollins) with Mark Halperin, tells the CBS show.
Obama — who reportedly nixed offering Sen. Clinton the vice presidency because he, too, had reservations about Bill Clinton — insisted he needed her on his team. “Obama comes back and shows vulnerability to her. He says to her, ‘Given the economic crisis, given all I have to deal with, I need your help,’ ” Halerpin, who writes for Time magazine, tells “60 Minutes.”
The book has other revelations which will make it a must read (yours truly will order it from Amazon as soon as this is posted): reportedly about the warring John and Elizabeth Edwards’, tensions between Obama and his Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden, more info on Sarah Palin’s uneasy relationship with the McCain campaign…and more.
Marc Ambinder has an advance copy and has read it and his comment makes it almost required reading:
Political scientists aren’t going to like this book, because it portrays politics as it is actually lived by the candidates, their staff and the press, which is to say — a messy, sweaty, ugly, arduous competition between flawed human beings — a universe away from numbers and probabilities and theories.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.