In The Daily Dish at TheAtlantic.com Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) supporter Andrew Sullivan writes on January 25, 2008: (emphasis added)
For understandable reasons, most coverage of the Clintons' dual political persona focuses on the oddity of a married couple each seeking the same executive office in turn. This is indeed remarkable in American politics, although more familiar to historians of India, the Philippines or South America. And it allows for people to write as if having a power-couple as co-presidents is just an interesting, even appealing novelty.But the trouble with such an arrangement is not its tabloidy and democratically primitive charms. It is its under-appreciated threat to democratic accountability and even the Constitution. In the first Clinton term, we had an unprecedented situation where a woman elected to nothing and with no Cabinet rank was given responsibility for the entire healthcare system. She was accountable largely to a man she was married to - not the American people. She functioned not as the traditional spouse of a president, but as a free-floating second president whose line of authority was at once clear (no one dared cross her) and confusing (what legal authority does she have anyway?). As the Clinton term progressed, it appeared that she reverted to a more traditional role - but we do not know since the records of the couple's political arrangement remain sequestered from public scrutiny.
But if we faced a problem in the first Clinton presidency, imagine what we confront in the second. ...
The problem of political dynasticism is the least of it. American politics have been riven by dynasties from the start. What America has never dealt with is this strange and corrupting arrangement whereby voters are being asked to support two-people-as-one as president. The last two weeks have shown beyond any doubt that this is indeed what is going on. By blurring the lines of accountability, by giving a former president vague but enormous powers in what amounts to an unconstitutional third term, we are sacrificing an important democratic principle and the transparency required to stymie corruption and secret deals kept from public scrutiny by the sacred bonds of matrimony.
There is no reason a constitutional republic should be forced to sacrifice its principles this way. This basic issue of accountability needs to be placed firmly on the table. One option for Barack Obama is to demand now that all the records of the Clintons' marital/political dealings with each other in their first two terms be released in full for public inspection.
Priceless!
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