The Clintons: America’s Luckiest Political Family
At every turn, good fortune has found its way to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
By Charles C. W. Cooke — August 3, 2016
‘Ability,” Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have proposed, “is of little account without opportunity.” In our modern vernacular, this idea would be put a trifle differently: “You can be good,” we might posit, “but you also need to be lucky.” Has there ever been a family to which this maxim could be more appropriately attached than the Clintons?
Perhaps the most talented national politician of his generation, Bill Clinton was nevertheless a routine beneficiary of improbable good fortune. During the 1992 election season, Clinton managed to walk calmly across No Man’s Land without catching so much as a scratch. During the primary, his late-stage rival Jerry Brown gaffed his way out of a mathematically unassailable polling advantage and permitted the less-known Clinton to sneak to victory against all the odds. During the general election, a deteriorating economy, a spate of Republican infighting, and the vagarious behavior of a popular third-party candidate helped Clinton overcome his manifold character deficiencies and pull off a historic upset against an overqualified opponent, who, just a year earlier, had commanded a public approval rating of 89 percent. As he racked up his successes, the press came to see Clinton as the “comeback kid.” In truth, “fortunate kid” would have been more on the mark.
more
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/438648/print
