What about Bubba?

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

: When campaign pressures forced the Clintons to release their income-tax returns earlier this year, it turned out that they had raked in a startling $90 million in book incomes and speaking fees alone since leaving the White House. Not bad for a family that had left the House some $12 million in the hock. But detractors say that this money-making will come back to bite Barack Obama in a bad place, that he has leaped into an unruly ménage-à-trois by appointing Hillary his secretary of state.

It’s true that in the pursuit of his library and foundation, Bill has been consorting with some unsavory people. Topping his grubby directory is billionaire Ron Burkle, who accounted for 20% of Bill’s 2003-07 earnings. When Burkle (whose airplane is nastily nicknamed “Air F*** One” and who was accompanied by someone “not much older than 19”) flew in with Bill into a society wedding, Vanity Fair’s national editor was on hand to verify that Clinton’s own behavior at the time was not anything other than proper. But all the tabloid speculation about his unpresidential cavorting, on and off the campaign trail, hasn’t received equally respectable rebuttals. Is Hillary privy to her hubby’s alleged indulgences? Insofar as she “benefited” from them, she certainly cannot disown them. In his own words, when Bill left the presidency deeply in debt, he started chasing earnings enough to “support a senator”.