“There is reason to believe that Clinton, who never made more than $35,000 a year as governor of Arkansas and left the White House about $12 million in debt, has had his head turned by his ability to enjoy his post-presidential status; that the world of rich friends, adoring fans, and borrowed jets in which he travels has skewed his judgment or, at a minimum, created uncomfortable appearances of impropriety. There is ample evidence that his eight-year absence from a political workplace that has changed radically in the interim has left him conspicuously rusty at the craft of which he was once a master. There are those friends who worry that Clinton has never been the same since his quadruple-bypass surgery, in 2004, and the unexpected follow-up operation six months later to remove accumulated scar tissue on his lung…It is also possible that all these influences have combined to make the cavernous narcissism that has always driven Clinton, for better and worse, at last consume the man almost completely.“
As the primary season draws to a close, former White House correspondent and longtime Clinton watcher Todd Purdum tries to ascertain what’s happened to Bill Clinton since 2001 (and takes another look at some of his recent questionable dealings.) “Perhaps more than anything, Clinton, whose audiences in recent years have tended to be adoring crowds who hang on every word of what those who have heard his standard speech say is a rambling tour d’horizon of world problems, has simply lost a step.”
Update: “Most revealing is one simple fact: President Clinton has helped save the lives of 1,300,000 people in his post-presidency, and Vanity Fair couldn’t find time to talk to even one of them for comment.” Suffice to say, Pres. Clinton didn’t like the piece.