Could Bill Clinton Get Elected Today?

No, he could not.


Think about what happened to Obama and Hillary last month.

Obama's minister resurfaced in a big way, derailing his campaign for most of the month. And it's not over yet.

Then Hillary got caught in a clear, calculated, obvious lie regarding being 'under sniper fire' and 'running for the vehicles' on the tarmac in Bosnia. Too bad video existed depicting her slowly exiting the plane, stopping to accept flowers from a local girl, and then lazily reviewing the US troops gathered for the occasion.

As the Wall Street Journal's Danieal Henninger noted several weeks ago, now the existence of YouTube and cable news channels assures that gaffes like these never die. They are hung, suspended electronically on the internet, for all time.

Bloggers like me write about them. Others link to the videos or the news stories. It never ends.

In this environment, how would Slick Willie ever have successfully scuttled the Jennifer Flowers story for the duration of the campaign? Or the several other bimbos from his past? The woman who alleged he raped her while he was Governor in Arkansas?

Or Hillary's improbably cattle futures profits with "Red" Bone, her broker? And the budding Whitewater scandals?

If he had managed to make it to the Oval Office, scandals like Vince Foster's suicide/murder, Travelgate and the infamous Hillary Healthcare Task Force would have lived on to dog him as he suffered impeachment during his second election campaign.

Truly, modern communications have changed Presidential campaigns drastically, and forever. Candidates like both Clintons, and, evidently, Obama, who depend upon fresh media news cycles to hide their most recent scandal or major embarrassing incident or relationship, are out of luck.

On the internet, in the hands of unpaid, but not uninterested bloggers, fact-checkers and self-appointed critics, these stories never go away. Ever.

Welcome to 2008's gift to the ever-changing world of US Presidential election campaigns.