Two-Term President Bill Clinton's Puppet: Hillary Clinton?

In order to apparently evade the spirit of the 22nd amendment of the U.S. Constitution (which attempted to prevent any U.S. politician from occupying the White House for more than two terms), former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, is running as a 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate. The former member of the Wellesley College board of trustees and Wal-Mart board of directors is also attempting to portray herself as being something other than Bill Clinton’s surrogate and political puppet. Yet as former New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth and current New York Times reporter Don Van Natta Jr. observed in their 2007 book, Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton:

“Hillaryland’s chief advisor, of course, is Bill, who often test markets Hillary’s position or sound bites before she uses them herself to see how they play…

“She supported Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan…On October 25 [2001], she voted for the Patriot Act…She remained decidedly hawkish, far closer to President Bush than most of her fellow Democrats were…

“…Her husband, Bill Clinton, had signed a law in 1998 that contained…provisions calling for regime change, and he also predicted the same year that Saddam Hussein would use weapons of mass destruction…

“Bill served as her main counsel on the Iraq war vote…Hillary voted against an amendment to the war resolution that would have required the diplomatic emphasis…Instead of voting for Bush to pursue more diplomacy, she voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq…”

In utilizing his wife as a stand-in candidate to apparently evade a term-limit constitutional amendment, former Democratic Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton seems to be doing something similar to what another former Southern Democratic Governor, George Wallace, did in Alabama in 1965 to violate the spirit of a section of the Alabama state constitution which prohibited Alabama governors from serving two consecutive terms in office. As the 1994 book George Wallace by Stephen Lesher recalled:

“…In September 1965, Wallace called the legislature into special session with instructions to draw up a constitutional amendment to allow a sitting governor to run for a second consecutive term…

“…Immediately after being notified that the succession resolution had been voted down, Wallace rose from his desk; jabbed a cigar in his mouth; and, as he started out the door for an out-of-town engagement, turned to his staff and said simply, `My wife may run.’…

“…Only with Lurleen [Wallace] as governor could Wallace claim…to be…the co-sovereign…

“Rep. Edith Green of Oregon feared that Lurleen’s evident role as her husband’s pawn might set back the movement toward women’s equality…

“After Lurleen’s overwhelming victory in the primary and general elections, George…offered a number of `recommendations’ for the new administration, which everyone understood to be Lurleen’s proposed legislative program…

“After Lurleen’s inauguration, she moved into the governor’s office suite (number 100), while George moved in across the hall (number 101) but retained the key to the private entrance to Lurleen’s office. Lurleen kept George’s cabinet intact…"

The Politics of Rage by Dan Carter also observed that “the sweeping victory of Lurleen Wallace, stand-in candidate for governor, had made George Wallace the king of a captive state.”

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