Bill Clinton

When Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is asked on the campaign trail what her husband would do in the unprecedented role of "first laddy," she suggests that he'd serve as a kind of goodwill ambassador to the world. The answer is decent, but the question is strange because he already has a demanding job: He's the head of the William J. Clinton Foundation, which tries to make a serious dent in such problems as climate change, HIV/AIDS and Third World poverty.

There can be only one explanation: There are two Bill Clintons.There is the Bill Clinton who seems to have attended ethics classes taught by Richard Nixon.This is the Bill Clinton who can't come clean. This is the Bill Clinton who leaps over unpleasant truths like Baryshnikov leaps across a stage.Did Clinton ever take drugs?Depends on what you mean. Depends on where you mean. Depends on whether he breathed in or out.Did he ever evade a draft notice?Depends on what you mean by evade. Or by draft notice.

CAUGHT BETWEEN two big-money constituencies -- tort lawyers involved in lucrative class action suits and high-tech entrepreneurs seeking protection from frivolous litigation -- President Clinton sided with the former and was promptly rebuffed by Congress.In suffering the first veto-override of his administration, the president found his position flawed on both tactical and substantive grounds. His veto, 30 minutes before deadline last Tuesday midnight, stunned proponents of the legislation.

WHEN REPUBLICAN political adviser Dick Morris started coaching his old friend Bill Clinton last summer, everyone knew it would just be a matter of time before the president started distancing himself from liberal Democrats who, from his perspective, constitute most members of his party in Congress.The strategy is "triangulation." Republicans are on the right of the base, Democrats on the left, and at the apex of the triangle, half way between and above them, is the president. President Clinton, who has always been known as a politician of less than firm convictions, took to the strategy like a waffle to syrup.

The White House, owing perhaps to the tabloid fatigue of the general public, seems to have weathered the acute anxiety its denizens reportedly experienced in anticipation of the recent publication of James B. Stewart's book, "Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries."That there was such anxiety, though, is reason enough for us dispirited voters to see what the book has to say before the wages of November -- and the cheapened civic sacrament of voting -- are upon us.If "Blood Sport" does nothing else, its exposure of the arrogance of power, the venality of unfettered ambition, the abuse of public office, and the exploitation of personal relationships commands our attention to the central issue in the coming presidential campaign: the character of the person(s)

BOSTON -- At first the newspaper ad barely registers. I am so immune to the endless presidential campaign that it passes across my line of vision like a subliminal political message. There is the full-page photo of Bill crossing the White House lawn with Hillary and Chelsea, saying that the ''toughest job in the world isn't being president. It's being a parent.''What is this, another Dick Morris Moment in the creation of the Papa Presidency? Yet another message for the soccer moms?Then a variation on this ad campaign appears on television.

New York -- IN CONVENTION assembled, let us now join in hope that press and politicians will drop this baby boomer business about Gov. Bill Clinton and Sen. Al Gore.The label makes two sophisticated and experienced politicians sound as if there were something different, something coltish, about them that separates them from Americans who were born before World War II.The truth is that Governor Clinton has managed to compile a political record of maturity in this campaign that so far has eluded both his elder competitors.

Voters in Maryland's 6th Congressional District have been hearing a familiar Arkansas drawl on the phone this week: It's Bill Clinton calling, letting them know he thinks the world of Democratic candidate John Delaney. All over the state, Marylanders have been receiving robocalls from celebrities and elected officials delivering messages for or against state ballot issues or political candidates. The voices of "Desperate Housewives" actress Eva Longoria and magician David Copperfield tout the advantages of expanded gambling.

WASHINGTON - Hoping to allay conflict-of-interest concerns as his wife prepares to become secretary of state, former President Bill Clinton yesterdayreleased a donor list that showed he had raised as much as $131 million from foreign governments - including Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Norway - for the William J. Clinton Foundation. More than 200,000 patrons who had given a combined $500 million to his foundation since its inception in 1997 were identified by name only. The disclosures reveal a veiled world of international intrigue with a charitable goal but a cast of characters that includes countries, companies and individuals with vital and sometimes less than altruistic interests in U.S. foreign policy.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- He's scrapping with reporters. Pushing his wife's candidacy. Lashing out at her top rival in the Democratic presidential race. Former President Bill Clinton's recent aggressive tactics in the 2008 campaign have propelled him squarely to center stage - to the dismay of some prominent Democrats who fear he might be damaging the party's prospects for November. The vocal role he is carving out also might be a preview, should Hillary Rodham Clinton win in the fall, of how the White House would operate under the unprecedented scenario of a president being married to an ex-president.