Clintons’ shady dealings have taken the shine off
Two-for-One Deal, Part 2

By HENRY SREBRNIK, for the [Halifax, Nova Scotia] Chronicle-Herald

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Letters/1057351.html

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is hugged by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as he introduces her during a campaign rally in Louisville, Ky. on Monday. Many Democrats are uneasy with the prospect of a second Clinton presidency. (Elise Amendola / AP)

BARACK OBAMA has again become the favourite to win the Democratic Party nomination – and that’s a good thing.

Because even when Hillary Clinton was beating Obama in primaries in states like Indiana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, super-delegates continued to move towards him, many stating they didn’t like Clinton’s "negative" campaign.

This may have been their way of saying "we know the Clintons better than the public does, and we know what unethical operators they are."

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Often, when the well-known head of an institution – say, a CEO of a corporation, a president of a university, or a leader of a political party – leaves, the people on "the street" remember the "positive" things they have accomplished, but those working close to them may be glad to see a domineering, autocratic, aggressive boss depart.

As well, some Democrats were uncomfortable with the idea of having another Clinton in the White House, eight years after the previous one – who would himself be returning to the executive mansion as a spouse – left office.

Would this couple not in effect be circumventing the 22nd amendment to the U.S. constitution, which forbids more than two terms to a president?

When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, he and Hillary said people were getting a "two-for-one" deal.

Indeed, one could make the case that she was as much in charge as he was. Bill was useful to her, the advance guard, so to speak, for her own ambitions.

Now we would have seen the reverse. Bill would, at the very least, have been helping to formulate policy – and with no official legal standing, he would be far harder to control by the other branches of government. The system of checks and balances would not apply to him.

The former president has been involved in business dealings with shady characters around the globe, including government leaders, from Colombia and China to Kazakhstan and Dubai.

Would it be appropriate for the spouse of a sitting president to be in business with the leaders of foreign countries? Would some of these people have attempted to buy favours from Hillary through Bill?

Bill Clinton established the William J. Clinton Foundation in 1997 and it has raised $500 million since then, most of which has been spent on his presidential library in Arkansas. Donations soared to $135 million in 2006 alone, much of it from unsavoury foreign sources. Clinton has said he won’t violate the "privacy" of donors by disclosing their names.

An article by Greg Gordon that ran in the Miami Herald and other McClatchy newspapers on May 9 reported that special interests have paid millions of dollars to Bill Clinton for speeches and other work since he left the White House. "The ex-president has been crisscrossing the globe, speaking roughly 250 times on tours that brought him more than $40 million in six years."

By drawing on her husband’s earnings, Hillary Clinton was enabling sponsors, who have paid as much as $450,000 to hear Bill speak, to "funnel their funds through the Bill Clinton front," according to Lawrence Jacobs, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

"It’s an ingenious method for fundraising" that bypasses campaign finance rules and the limits placed on those contributions, he added.

Clinton also granted some 140 last-minute pardons as he left office in 2000. In fact, Hillary Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Bill.

Even Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, a Clinton ally throughout the 1990s, called the pardons a "betrayal" and "contemptuous." Were there some quid pro quos involved?

These are important questions that were never adequately addressed.

In the latter days of her campaign, Hillary Clinton had adopted a populist stance, attacking the oil-producing nations and the energy industry as being responsible for the high price of gasoline.

Yet while she railed against the OPEC cartel, her husband was getting donations for his library from many Middle Eastern tycoons.

No wonder many voters couldn’t really believe anything she said.