Political pundits now speculate that if Hillary is elected US president, her husband Bill Clinton could replace her as New York’s Senator in Congress.
WASHINGTON: And they said a thing like this would happen only in Bihar. Political pundits in Washington now speculate that if Senator Hillary Clinton is elected United States president, her husband and former president Bill Clinton could replace her as New York’s Senator in Congress.
If Hillary is indeed elected in 2008, New York’s governor Eliot Spitzer is bound by law to nominate a successor for two of the remaining four years of her six-year-term as Senator. In 2010, the state would go in another Senate election, the winner of which would serve for the remaining two years of Hillary’s term.
The rumour mills began working overtime in Washington when Harold Ickes, a former aide to the Bill Clinton White House and currently an advisor to Hillary’s presidential campaign, said in an interview to the Washington Examiner that, “As a senator, he (Bill Clinton) would be a knockout. He know issues, he loves public policy and he is a good politician.”
Another top Democratic Party advisor and one of Bill Clinton’s top White House consultants Paul Begala said to the Washington Examiner that, “President Bill Clinton would excel in the Senate... he excelled as the attorney general and governor of Arkansas, he excelled as president and he’s been a model of the modern Senate spouse.”
The former president will be helped by the fact that New York’s current governor Eliot Spitzer is also a Democrat and is most likely to nominate a fellow party member to succeed Hillary and represent his state in the 100-member US Senate.
If events do turn out in the manner Washington is speculating, this will not be the first time that a former president has sat in Congress. John Quincy Adams, president from 1825-29 was elected the House of Representatives in 1831, a seat he held until his death in 1848. Later that century, Andrew Johnson who headed the White House from 1865-69, held a Senate seat from March 1875 until his death in July the same year.
Several Democrats are confident that Hillary would, as current polls indicate, sweep the 2008 elections to be inaugurated as the first woman president of the US in January 2009. While there is a possibility that Spitzer could go the politically correct way and appoint either a Black or a Hispanic successor to Hillary, the chances of that happening appear to be dim as of now since Bill Clinton could turn out to be a strong contender. Other contenders include New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the Kennedy family scion Robert F Kennedy, Jr, an environmental lawyer and a radio talk show host.
The Washington Examiner also quoted Larry Sabato, director of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia as saying that Bill Clinton “is a natural for the Senate. He loves to talk and schmooze. He could be a great vote-organiser.”
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