Is Bill Clinton Mentally Ill? Former President Goes Berserk at Meeting with California Super-Delegates, Lashes Out at Former Bill Richardson Delegate

Bill Clinton had yet another nuclear melt-down when, at a private meeting with California super-delegates, he berated New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who had served in his cabinet as Energy Secretary and later as ambassador to the United Nations, for endorsing Barack Obama. The meeting was held before the former President gave a speech at the state convention of the California Democratic Party, where he urged Democrats to "chill out" and dampen down the intensity of their feelings in the contest between his wife Hillary and Barack Obama, who are vying for the Party's Presidential nomination.

According to participants at the super-delegate meeting, Bill Clinton was anything but "chilled." The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Rachel Binah, a former Bill Richardson delegate who had shifted her allegiance to Hillary Clinton after the New Mexico governor dropped out of the race, told Bill Clinton that she was "sorry" about James Carville's characterization of Richardson as a Judas for endorsing Barack Obama. Carville had been Bill Clinton's campaign manager in 1992.

According to the Chronicle, Bill Clinton went berserk, flushing red in the face and jabbing his finger.

"Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that," the Chronicle reported Clinton as saying to Binah. Clinton then began ranting about media bias, the unfairness of caucus states, and calls for Hillary to drop out of the race.

The Chronicle quoted on super-delegate as saying, "It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended."

Rachel Binah was stunned by the outburst. Art Torres, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, later called her at her home to offer an apology from Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton had lobbied Bill Richardson intensely for an endorsement for Hillary, even attending a Superbowl party with the New Mexico governor. A Richardson spokesman, responding to Bill Clinton's blow-up in California, said that Richardson had never "promised or guaranteed" the Clintons that he would endorse Hillary. Bill Richardson, who is half-Mexican and identifies as a Hispanic, mentioned Barack Obama's speech on race when giving his endorsement, and also expressed his dismay over the Clinton's race-baiting tactics during the campaign.

Bill Clinton's morphing from the self-proclaimed "First Black President" to a world-class race-baiter, akin in kind if not degree to such other former Arkansas governors as Orval Faubus, has many political observers scratching their heads. While everyone knows the Clintons would do anything for power, naked appeals to bigotry seemed beyond even them, who are known for their ruthlessness -- yet, it was Hillary Clinton herself -- who proclaimed "words are cheap," apparently from personal experience -- who a week ago, sat next to the alleged architect of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband to race-bait Barack Obama.

During Bill Clinton's first term in office, there were a plethora of magazine articles questioning his mental health as well as his cognitive abilities, as he seemed unable to make decisions or lead the country. Unlike his successor in the Oval Office, his intelligence was never in doubt, but there was a great deal of pop-psychology speculation that his white trash childhood had engendered mental dysfunction. The ascension of a Republican Congress in 1995, and Bill Clinton's adaptation to his role as a "Rockefeller Republican" riding shotgun on a trip being made by a Republican Congress, his embrace of a governance policy more in line with the GOP's mandates and philosophy than he experienced when the Democrats were in control of Congress, stifled this kind of speculation until the Lewinsky sex scandal broke in 1998.

Former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whose quest to wrest the Democratic Presidential nomination from front-runner Barack Obama looks increasingly quixotic, reacted to the revelation of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal a decade ago by alluding to her husband's sanity, according to the 2007 book For Love of Politics by Sally Bedell Smith. Smith quoted a friend of Hillary's for the inside skinny on the First Lady's cuckolding by President Bill Clinton. According to Smith, Hillary Clinton denied the revelations, saying that her hubby Bubba "couldn't be that insane."

The 18-month-long Lewinsky affair transpired in the White House, where Hillary Clinton lived and conducted her own business as a "hands-on" First Lady in the guise of Eleanor Roosevelt. Collating the Starr Report on the Lewinsky sex scandal with recently revealed records of Hillary Clinton's stint as First Lady, it was revealed that Bill Clinton had sex with Monica Lewinsky at least three times while Hillary was conducting official business in the White House.

Indeed, Hillary Clinton's initial reaction was right: Bill Clinton would have to be insane if he had conducted such an affair in the White House. The fact is, he willingly conducted such a potentially explosive affair. Caught with his britches down, rather than resign like former governors Eliot Spitzer and Jim McGreevey, Bubba Bill Clinton put the country through a grueling impeachment process, only the second time in the nation's history that a president's "Crimes & Misdemeanors" brought about the implementation of that constitutionally prescribed piece of machinery.

During the run-up to Bill Clinton's 1992 run for the Presidency, due diligence had been performed on the more than 20 women that the then-governor of Arkansas had carried on affairs with in order to forestall "bimbo eruptions" that might hurt his candidacy. Indeed, one bimbo eruption (before the "Mother of All Bimbo Eruptions" that made a stained blue dress the most famous piece of White House fashion since Jackie Kennedy's pillbox hat) -- the revelation of taped conversations with Clinton made by long-time paramour Gennifer Flowers -- nearly derailed his candidacy during the early primaries. Hillary Clinton had to appear on 60 Minutes with her perpetually horny hubby and sign off as a willing enabler to his sexual hijinks. It was the first flashing of the moral relativism that the power couple would become so adept at on the national stage, and a good chunk of the electorate, including the morally relative Baby Boom generation, bought it.

According to Smith's book, Hillary understood that Bill would be prone to having on-the-road flings and one-night stands with assorted bimbos. (Women linked to Bill Clinton during his presidency include Barbra Streisand, Meg Ryan and Aretha Franklin.) However, she did not believe that he would be so reckless as to carry on a long-term, Gennifer Flowers-class affair while president.

She was wrong.

At first, Hillary Clinton could not believe it, attributing the "rumors" of the Lewinsky affair to the machinations of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" bankrolled by Richard Mellon Scaife, whom ironically, sat at her side last week when she race-baited Barack Obama before the editorial staff of the Pittsburgh News-Gazette, a newspaper Scaife owns.

Politics does make strange bedfellows.

But Hillary could not believe that Bill had taken the young intern Lewinsky as a bedfellow, apparently as it jeopardized her own ambitions: To be the first woman President of the United States.

Smith's source said that, "'...[I]f [Hillary] heard that he had sort of gone out and had a fling on the road, she could have believed that in a heartbeat. Look, she was not about to divorce him for doing something that he had been doing for their whole married life, the only difference being the magnitude.'"

Smith said that Hillary was floored by the revelations about what had gone on on the floor of the Oval Office, as well as the fact "...that it lasted for . . . 18 months, which is an astonishing length of time."

Self-interest was the reason Hillary swallowed her pride and fought like a trooper against the forces marshaling for Bill Clinton's impeachment.

"It was far more to her advantage to stay with Bill Clinton because she was already thinking about her own political ambitions," Smith said during a promotional tour for her book. "One of her top advisers told me that one of the reasons, if not the reason, that she fought the impeachment so hard and was such a chief strategist during that whole period is that she saw her own political aspirations go down the drain. She had been thinking about the presidency for a long time."

Remember: Hillary Clinton, the person who knew Bill Clinton best, thought that for Bubba to have carried on an affair with an intern for a year-and-a-half in the White House would be a hallmark of insanity. Maybe it was.

Bill Clinton's bizarre behavior on the campaign hustings calls into question his mental health. Reportedly, Bill Clinton recently was engaged in an affair with The Honourable Belinda Stronach, a Canadian Member of Parliament, Privy Councilor and former Cabinet minister, who also happens to be one of the richest women in Canada and -- like Bill -- has been outed as an adulterer by legal proceedings. (Stronach may or many not have been involved in the revelation of Barack Obama's clarification of his position on NAFTA to the Canadians. The Canadian government held for questioning an economics adviser to Hillary Clinton's campaign, an incident which may -- or may not -- be related to the Obama diplomatic flap.)

In Canada and the U.K., the Clinton-Stronach relationship is well-known. In the U.S, the undeniable fact of the Clinton-Stronach relationship is that the two traveled across New York State extensively last year and call each other "friend."

Bill Clinton allegedly took a vow that he would put aside his womanizing during his wife's campaign to retake the Oval Office for the Clinton Clan. Then, after her inauguration, he will be made a "roaming ambassador" -- which is a brilliant case of form meeting function as it will enable his roaming eye to be indulged, outside of the purview of the American press. As long as the consummations of Bubba's dalliances take place outside the United States, with women such as the Canadian Belinda Stronach, things will be OK as it will spare Hillary humiliation. (This is based on the simple axiom that -- except for the Middle East and the British Royal Family -- there is no such thing as anything existing outside of the United States, to the American media.)

One school of thought is that Bill Clinton's egregious campaign errors, such as his grotesque race-baiting of Barack Obama in Nevada and South Carolina and his calling into question Obama's patriotism in North Carolina (a state Hillary Clinton is bound to lose due to its large African American population) is a subconscious ploy to destroy Hillary, either because his ego can't take the idea of her being president, or because his heart belongs to Belinda Stronach.

When Hillary's campaign faltered after Iowa, there were messages sent back and forth between political junkies in New Hampshire to attend the election eve Manchester rally because if she lost the New Hampshire primary, her candidacy would be doomed, and it would be an historical event as it might be the last time the Clinton nuclear family would be together, outside of a divorce court. Hillary cried earlier that day, staved off defeat, and continued her run for the Presidency. Whether the Clinton family can survive her inevitable defeat for the Democratic nomination remains in question.

Newt Gingrich believes that the race for the Presidency is "insane," and surely, the pressures of campaigning could exacerbate character flaws in anyone and cause them to commit follies. However, with Bill Clinton's continual melt-downs, his unprincipled race-baiting and his resorting to "McCarthyism," as one Barack Obama supporter characterized the former President's questioning of Obama's patriotism, the question that has lingered for a generation -- is Bill Clinton mentally ill? -- must be asked once again. For who knows what untold grief that Bubba may cause Hillary Clinton and this country in the future, if she should miracle herself into the Oval Office.

Sources:

San Francisco Chronicle, "Bill Clinton's tirade stunned some delegates"

New York Post, "Oval Trysts 'insane' To Hillary"

The First Post, "Bill and Belinda's excellent adventure"

CNN.com, "Modern road to White House 'verges on insane,' says Gingrich"