When Bill met Hillary: 'I knew I might be starting something I couldn't stop'

You think back to the Clinton Administration, and you remember all the corruption and all the other nonsense, and you wonder how the guy could have possibly remained so popular throughout the whole thing. Then you watch this speech, and you remember. Oh. Right. This guy can spin a tale unlike just about anyone you've ever seen. The story about how they met at law school actually sounds like it could be plausible. The rest? Who knows? Hillary takes time from school and runs off to help black kids in prison? Hillary helps bust a segregated school and almost single-handedly pressures the Nixon Administration to end its tax exemptions? Hillary starts a legal aid clinic providing services to poor people? Remember, this is Bill Clinton talking. You get sucked into this thing and you could almost believe it wouldn't be a complete disaster to make her president:

Hillary is such a wonderful advocate for children and their legal rights, she even proved it by attacking a 12-year-old rape victim and then laughing about it! Bill would have you believe that Hillary took on every problem children and minorities have in America, and single-handedly fixed all of them, and if you're enjoying anything positive in your life today, you don't even realize that you owe it all to Hillary and the work she was doing all by herself while raising a daughter, working full-time and watching Police Academy movies with Bill and Chelsea. Even if everything in this speech was true - and there's no way it can be because Bill is almost as big a liar as Hillary, but much more charming and convincing in doing so - it matters not a hill of beans. The presidency is not about finding shelf paper and registering for law school classes. It's about running a government that's responsive to the people, faithful to the Constitution and committed to the best interests of the nation and not of those who found the way into the trappings of power. Anyone who has paid attention to Hillary's career knows she won't do any of that. But that doesn't mean this speech might not be effective. Democrat true believers see politics as heroic, and they think every problem that anyone ever had can be solved by a courageous political leader who works tirelessly and won't take no for an answer. That's not how life works at all, but they think that's how it works, and that's why they're willing to put up with the corruption and the narcissism if they think they've got someone who's a "change maker" as Bill tries to tell us Hillary is.

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The better question is why anyone believes this about Hillary when everything in her track record suggests she's inept and highly ineffective. Well. Maybe it's because a guy this charming and this convincing has been sporadically selling this nonsense to the public for the past 25 years. If you ever sit back and wonder how two such awful people achieved so much political success, remember: In the early '90s, the Democrats seemed to be on a presidential losing streak that would never end. They'd been absolutely destroyed in 1984 with Walter Mondale and in 1988 with Michael Dukakis. Their ideology and their politicians kept getting rejected by the American people, and there were questions about whether they would ever win a presidential election again. Along came this guy. He was, and still is, about the best BSer you've ever seen in your life. He completely changed the whole image of the Democrats, and although the corruption and the philandering were no secret even then, the Democrats didn't care because they finally had a real charmer with political star power. He could win. They hadn't had that in a long time, probably since JFK. And they wanted it badly. So they signed on for the myth of the Clintons and strapped in for the ride. The phony political persona of Hillary as this smart, tough-as-nails, caring woman who's ready to lead and better prepared than anyone else who ever came along? That tale was part of the Clinton myth from the moment they emerged on the scene, and last night Bill was trying to sell it again, dismissing all indications to the contrary as "made up." If you haven't been paying attention, you just might believe it. Pay attention.