The death of Clintonism

The other truth is that a huge part of Clintonism was always Bill Clinton himself, and his singular ability to speak to both the most elite audiences and the most everyday ones in ways that could move each, with a unique combination of the Ozarks and Oxford that has rarely if ever been seen in contemporary American politics. Hillary Clinton’s best efforts to retail a retooled version of Clintonism in 2008 crumbled in the face of Obama’s promise of hope and change.

“Bill Clinton himself was Bubba,” as Kamarck puts it. “He always got that.” It was no accident that Clinton and Jimmy Carter—two white Southerners—stand as two of the only three Democrats to win the White House in the past half century (or that Obama had demographic advantages as an African-American that were not easily transferred to Hillary Clinton).

But Bill Clinton himself was far from an unalloyed asset in Hillary’s campaign this year. The rosy glow that had come to surround much of his post presidency, and his charitable foundation’s good works around the world, receded in the face of Trump’s relentless reminders of his personal and sexual misconduct in office, and his and his wife’s tendency toward legalistic corner-cutting—a point Sanders also drove home, even as he disavowed any interest in “her damn emails.”

“I think a lot of the problem for Hillary this time was that though Bill has kind of sustained a hold on the public’s imagination, and has a kind of charismatic quality that endears him to people and overshadows even his derring-do with Monica Lewinsky, it’s a mixed story,” says historian Robert Dallek. “The fact that you had someone like Trump who is so totally inexperienced gave him a considerable advantage.”