THE BUBBA FACTOR IS HER BLESSING – & HER CURSE
By IAN BISHOP Post Correspondent
BIG BILL: Hillary Rodham Clinton is liable to suffer fallout if hubby Bill
misbehaves, experts say — but his upside includes charisma and access to near-unlimited cash.January 21, 2007 --
Voice your opinion: Can Hillary really be the next president?
WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton has her biggest asset and greatest liability right by her side - hubby Bill Clinton.
The former first couple experienced the soaring highs of his two presidential victories, and the cavernous lows of his sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky and subsequent impeachment - and everyone in the country has an opinion about it.
Now, Hillary is the Democratic front-runner for the White House, and Bill is viewed as one of the best Democratic strategists and fund-raisers on the planet - and she has access to his insights and resources whenever she wants.
"He's by far the biggest non-candidate asset in the Democratic Party," a veteran Democratic campaign operative told The Post.
He can draw huge, adoring crowds to rallies and fund-raisers, and his massive network of political donors is poised to pump cash into her campaign coffers.
Political pros say Bill Clinton's moneyman, former party boss Terry McAuliffe - who has already enlisted in Hillary's campaign army - is a fund-raising gift almost as good as the U.S. Treasury.
And his legion of famed political aides, like celebrity pundits James Carville and Paul Begala, comprise her kitchen cabinet - a skilled sounding board separate from her paid campaign operatives.
But the genesis for much of the anti-Hillary sentiment starts with Bill, from the Whitewater scandal to the Lewinsky scandal that led to impeachment - which she deemed a "vast right-wing conspiracy."
She didn't help her cause with her own disastrous effort to overhaul the health-care insurance system - a plan derisively dubbed "HillaryCare."
The plus for Hillary Clinton is that those scandals have all been picked over already by the press, while fellow White House hopefuls like Barack Obama and GOPer Mitt Romney haven't been vetted.
The worry now, operatives say, is what Bill Clinton will do over the next 22 months.
"The pitfalls are: One, him misspeaking and, two, him misacting - which to my understanding is entirely possible," the veteran operative said.
Keep him on a short leash, operatives advise, or her campaign will run off the tracks before it even gets going.
Hillary insisted yesterday she's in it to win it - but can she?
Democratic voters say they yearn for someone "electable," and fret the former first lady has too much baggage and is too polarizing to win a national election.
But political pros point out that a presidential race comes down to a handful of tossup states. So what if she's hated in Republican red states? Any Democrat will lose there.
"Look at the Electoral College map from last time. There isn't one blue state that John Kerry won that she won't win. All she has to do is pick up one or two more and she's in the White House," said the operative.
And political pros point to President Bush for a road map. Liberals and even some moderates reviled him, but he knew that if he kept the red states red and picked up a few tossups, he'd be heading back to the White House - a plan that played out perfectly.
The 2008 White House race will be decided in Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Ohio, Arizona - and maybe even Arkansas, her former home state.
"I think she's going to have a tougher time in the primaries. The grass roots and the 'net' roots aren't exactly enamored of her," the operative added.
Clinton hasn't yet campaigned in the kickoff election states of Iowa and New Hampshire - and aides say her skill at close-quarter retail politics will quickly push her poll numbers up and keep her in the driver's seat.
Camp Clinton also believes her online chats, scheduled for three days next week, will go a long way toward reaching out to likely primary voters.
And they say that the fact she is a woman won't hurt her chances of winning the White House.
"You've seen in the last few months that we've gone from the question of can Hillary win in a lot of the polls to she is winning," her pollster Mark Penn told Fox News Channel.
"You look at polls coming out, she's essentially tied with the Republican opposition and far ahead of any Democratic opposition," Penn added.
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