The Practical Wife

There are a spate of sprawling cover stories published this week that concern the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary—the clearest signal yet that the next election cycle, which officially kicks off in three years’ time, has begun.

Five years ago, during the marathon race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, Bill Clinton was openly flogged as a political dinosaur and a racist. Since then, he bounded back into the good graces of both the public and the media. By the 2012 elections, gone was the aggressive, angry Clinton of 2008, replaced once again by the post-presidential Clinton, the singular political and philanthropic personality of his generation—a nearly perfect human being who was able to deliver president Barack Obama his own reelection, while simultaneously taking great strides to cure global poverty through his foundation’s grants.

During the same period, Hillary Clinton was elevated to almost divine status during her tenure as secretary of state. This was not only because she had continued to be relevant after the many public bashings she’d sustained over decades in the public eye, but also because she had thrived where lesser pols had faltered. Of course, the luxury of sitting out a couple election cycles for the first time in many years helped, too. And so, Hillary Clinton, an astute and powerful politician, became synonymous with the word “diplomat.”

But now, Hillary, and therefore her husband, is no longer out of electoral politics. Political Hillary is back and, one gets the feeling, she is set on winning the American presidency.

The first order of business for the fledgling 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign: Clean up after Bill.

“Bill Clinton now leads a sprawling philanthropic empire like no other,” writes Alec MacGillis in his piece “Scandal at Clinton Inc.” for The New Republic. “The good it achieves is undeniable. It has formed partnerships with multinationals and wealthy individuals to distribute billions of dollars all over the globe. Its many innovative projects include efforts to lower the costs of medicines in developing nations and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in major cities.”

But now, there is another side to the Clinton-as-philanthropist-in-chief narrative that we’ve just recently begun to learn about, MacGillis explains: “And yet it’s hard to shake the sense that it’s not all about saving the world. There’s an undertow of transactionalism in the glittering annual dinners, the fixation on celebrity, and a certain contingent of donors whose charitable contributions and business interests occupy an uncomfortable proximity.”

“More than anyone else except Clinton himself, [Doug] Band is responsible for creating this culture,” MacGillis continues. “And not only did he create it; he has thrived in it.”

Enter the scapegoat, because the “undertow of transactionalism” inspires a visual that goes counter to the image the Clintons hope will be invoked when the former president’s philanthropic work is referenced. It is undeniable that there are plenty of accounts of the good that this work has produced, but how exactly do significant donations to the Clinton Foundation and corporate charity pledges through the Clinton Global initiative materialize? MacGillis’s article reveals that rich people and the corporations who love them aren’t simply donating, but are making a purchase. That purchase is Bill Clinton.

Consider, for example, the Kazakhstan incident with Canadian businessman Frank Giustra, Clinton, and Band. (Giustra, by the way, often made his luxury jet available to Clinton and Band.) On a 2005 visit to Kazakhstan, Giustra and Clinton overlapped. At a dinner where both men were guests, Clinton praised the country’s autocratic ruler, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. According to the New York Times, a few days later, Giustra secured a huge uranium-mining deal in Kazakhstan. Then, in early 2006, Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation, followed by another $100 million pledge. (He also “co-produced” Clinton’s sixtieth birthday party in Toronto, which raised another $21 million for the foundation.)

MacGillis lists other examples that are littered with elements of transactionalism. So, what to do if you’re advising the Clintons? What if there is some sort of pattern at play?

Their initial strategy seems multipronged: First, they found a scapegoat—Doug Band. Then, they have begun to paint good ol’ Bill as clueless, someone with no idea what was going on in his very powerful organization. Next, place Hillary in the position of hero-wife, back from her duties in Washington, ready to sort out everything with the assistance of daughter Chelsea. Finally, roll out an embarrassment of anonymous sources “close to” the couple to explain everything to one news outlet after another.

The Scapegoat

The MacGillis’ piece is not a direct investigative piece on Clinton’s philanthropic endeavors; instead, it’s mostly a profile of Band, Clinton’s bodyman-cum-top-aide since the 1990s. Until recently, Band has been Clinton’s all-encompassing gatekeeper. It was Band who managed Clinton’s schedule. It was Band who cut the donations-for-appearances deals with donors, while it seems Bill Clinton—one of the sharpest men on the planet—ran around naively shaking whatever hands he was told to, oblivious to everything.

Band starts to raise suspicions only after he begins playing up his association with Clinton a little too often; after he starts shaking down some donor money for his personal bank accounts in a sort of hyper-elite version of “finders’ fees,” and, eventually, after he sets up his own shady consulting company to cash in on his proximity to Clinton. In other words, he’s painted as something of a mobster.

The Bubba

Of course, this characterization of evil Band only really works if the former president is painted as more than a little lazy and clueless about matters as complex as money.

[C]linton was notoriously blasé about financial matters. “He doesn’t care about money,” the Clinton friend told me. “He doesn’t even have a credit card. When he wants to get something he says, ‘Wow, I love that,’ and whoever he’s with says, ‘Here it is!’” Band’s former White House colleague agrees that Clinton “has never worried a heck of a lot about that stuff. It’s more about, ‘Who’s loyal, who’s helping me, who’s delivering value?’ and not, ‘Are they doing really well for themselves on the side?’”

Never mind that the man they are describing was a former American president, one who constantly touted his economic acumen.

The Practical Wife

Finally, the third leg of the strategy really kicks off in the just-published New York magazine profile of Hillary Clinton and, by extension, her family. The piece describes how Hillary and daughter Chelsea arrived at the Clinton Foundation to clean up the mess that innumerate old softie Bill Clinton allowed to linger under the reign of evil Doug Band.

Chelsea’s arrival was a clear if unspoken critique of Doug Band, who’d long been Bill Clinton’s gatekeeper in his post-presidential life. In Chelsea’s view, the foundation started by Band had become sprawling and inefficient, threatened by unchecked spending and conflicts of interest, an extension of her father’s woolly style. In 2012, a New York Post story suggested impropriety in Band’s dual role, forcing Clinton to put a bit of distance between himself and Teneo.

In a report this summer, the Times claimed the foundation operated at a deficit and was vulnerable to conflicts of interest related to Teneo Holdings—which telegraphed the message that there was a new sheriff. Chelsea, says a Hillary loyalist, “has taken a chain saw to that organization. She has not allowed these old bubbas to deal with this.”

[. . .]

For Bill Clinton to acknowledge flaws in his institute and relinquish control to his daughter and wife was a new twist in the family relationship. People in both Bill’s and Hillary’s camp are quick to emphasize that Bill Clinton is still the lifeblood of the foundation and its social mission. Chelsea’s arrival is ultimately about preserving the foundation for the long term as he gets older and winds down some of his activities.

If Bill is the spiritual soul of the philanthropies, then Hillary is now the main organizational officer. If she could run State and then systematically clean up her husband’s foundations, what won’t she be able to do when she refocuses on the country at large?

The current press coverage demonstrates that the Clintons are already well aware of the attention coming their way. They know that there will be plenty of questions about Bill Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, and, of course, about Hillary Clinton herself. Indeed, many people in the country will be digging into Bill Clinton philanthropic dealings and rifling through just how his organizations are run.

This is especially important to the Clintons as current CNN polling shows Hillary Clinton would win both the Democratic nomination and the general election by approximately nine billion percentage points. The Clintons, perhaps more than any other political family, are acutely aware of the heat they’ll take in any election, so they’re working now to kill any nascent negative stories.

And now let’s watch as this narrative begins to solidify.