John Brummett, the Arkansas columnist, ponders the various reasons why Bill Clinton was so inept in campaigning for his wife. Brummett has a Machiavellian explanation for how disastrous Bill has been for his wife's campaign.

Here's the other thought: Clinton walks around irritated, even angst-ridden, over this whole thing. His legacy, which is all a former president has, gets minimized either way.

If his own wife becomes the first woman president, he will be recorded merely as her and history's forerunner, like John the Baptist.

If Barack Obama becomes president, Clinton will be recorded as a mere interlude, a president of eight years marked by decent government and personal scandal. He will be recorded as somebody filling the gap between the conservative transformer that Ronald Reagan was and the generational and cultural transformer that Obama was. He will be the man footnoted for history for having been prematurely anointed as our first black president. He will be the one who managed near the end to sully his otherwise sterling reputation on matters of race.

Decades hence, they'll ask on Trivial Pursuit: Before Barack Obama actually became the first black president, which president had been called the first black president? Everyone will miss it. They'll say FDR or JFK. Everyone will be astonished to turn the card and read "Bill Clinton."

The best thing that could happen for Clinton's legacy would be for John McCain to win and continue the post-Clinton Republican ineptitude. He would need for both Hillary and Barack to fail.

You don't think? Naw. Can't be. Nobody could be that smart and manipulative.

Perhaps. I prefer the explanation that we've just seen the real Bill. He has always had a bad temper and has been prone to amazing solipsism acting as if every event was really all about him even if he had to exaggerate or just plain lie to insert himself into every story. Remember his heartfelt, yet fictional, memories of black church burnings during his childhood? It was just that the media wasn't buying his shtick this time around. He was no longer the glorious scamp for whom people seemed ready to forgive anything. He was just that old guy trying to preserve his legacy and willing to say anything to keep the cool new guy from taking over the party that Bill Clinton had led for so long. He's yesterday's news and without that patina of being the GOP-slayer, the media and Democrats just don't have much time for him anymore.

Cross posted at Betsy's Page