“There is still time for both Clintons to solve the Hillary Problem,” the conservative columnist William Safire wrote in the Times in March, 1992, when Bill Clinton, the Governor of Arkansas, was first running for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Safire was referring to the manner in which Hillary, an accomplished lawyer, presented herself as someone who would reinvent the role of First Lady. Not everyone saw this as a problem. Indeed, Hillary had already proved a solution, appearing with her husband on “60 Minutes” after Gennifer Flowers, a former television reporter, had regaled a tabloid with stories of her affair with Bill. “I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” Clinton said, adding that she loved her husband and respected him, and “if that’s not enough for people, then heck, don’t vote for him.” Safire thought her comments were a “gaffe” that would alienate women; others thought that the remarks would offend country-music fans. But her appearance was widely credited as the reason that Bill Clinton finished a strong second in the New Hampshire primary, a result that made him “the Comeback Kid.”

This time, Hillary is running for President, and Bill would be the mold-breaking First Spouse. As such, his record is back on the table, with all the triumphs (a booming economy) that are acknowledged even by his enemies and all the flaws (the personal misjudgments) that are too familiar even to his friends. Now it’s Hillary who has a Bill problem, both because the question of his possible future White House position is a fair one and because her presumptive opponent, Donald Trump, will certainly raise it in ways that are deeply unfair.

The most urgent recommendation that Safire offered—“Get more specific about what role Hillary would play in your administration”—is one that the Clintons need to follow now about Bill. In a Democratic debate last December, she said that she was “probably still going to pick the flowers and the china for state dinners and stuff like that,” but would turn to her husband for “special missions,” making him sound like a secret agent. A couple of weeks ago, in Kentucky, during a discussion of America’s economic problems, she said, “I’ve told my husband he’s got to come out of retirement and be in charge of this.” A few days later, she pulled back, suggesting on “Meet the Press” that he wouldn’t exactly be in charge of anything. At another stop in Kentucky, she was asked if Bill would be given a position in her Cabinet—a question that arose about her in 1992. The answer, both times, was no.

There are more questions about the jobs that Bill has taken since leaving office. He has earned more than $132 million in speaking fees, in addition to book royalties and other income. (He has also raised money for the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.) The Clintons’ most recent financial-disclosure forms show that he earned nearly $2.7 million in fees for speaking to audiences that included financial-industry firms, after she announced her candidacy. He had indicated last May that this might be the case, saying, “I gotta pay our bills.” His most recent speech was on November 16th, two days after the second Democratic debate.

Bill Clinton can be a captivating speaker, but he can also be an undisciplined one. Last week, in a restaurant in Santa Fe, he got into a half-hour argument about his welfare and education programs with a twenty-four-year-old Bernie Sanders supporter. Earlier, in Philadelphia, he had an angry exchange with Black Lives Matter supporters over the 1994 crime bill. It wasn’t always clear whom Clinton was defending; because Hillary’s voice in her husband’s Administration was both strong and unofficial, sorting out the credit and the blame can, at times, require a thorough mastery of nineties-era minutiae.

That index includes the unedifying spectacle of Bill Clinton’s impeachment, which grew out of his affair with Monica Lewinsky and a sexual-harassment civil suit brought by an Arkansas state employee named Paula Jones. There are also serious allegations against Trump regarding the treatment of women. His first response, when challenged on them, is to cite Bill’s history, calling him an “abuser” and Hillary an “enabler”—indictment by psychobabble. At least one allegation goes beyond infidelity. On May 18th, Sean Hannity interviewed Trump on Fox News and was reciting a litany of old complaints about Clinton when Trump interrupted to say, “And rape.” This was a reference to Juanita Broaddrick, who said in an interview with NBC’s Lisa Myers in 1999—and again on Twitter this year—that “rape” is the proper word for an encounter she had with Clinton in 1978, when she was a nursing-home administrator. Some of her friends say she described it that way at the time. Clinton’s lawyer has strongly denied it on his behalf, and after all these years it is unadjudicatable. Nick Merrill, a Clinton-campaign press secretary, called Trump’s remark an attempt to distract voters and to drag America “through the mud.” He added, “If that’s the kind of campaign he wants to run that’s his choice.” Unfortunately, that is the campaign that Trump wants to run.

Trump does not appear to be interested in the truth of what he alleges, whether it concerns Barack Obama’s birth certificate or Ted Cruz’s father’s supposed connection to the J.F.K. assassination. Trump’s staff is reportedly assembling research on Whitewater (a real-estate quasi-scandal). He also told the Washington Post that people—not him, mind you, but some people—thought the 1993 suicide of Vincent Foster, who worked in the Clinton White House, “was absolutely a murder,” and that it somehow involved the Clintons. (Multiple investigations concluded definitively that Foster killed himself.) There is no practical limit to what Trump might say to Hillary Clinton on a debate stage.

Bill Clinton circa 1992 was a bright and cheerful character. A lot has changed since then; he is not the presence that he was, physically or politically. And Hillary is not Bill. But the lines between their public and private lives remain confusing, as evidenced in the dispute over her e-mails. It would be difficult for Hillary to ask voters to put all the problems in a box marked “Bill” and push it aside. William Safire also advised, “Stop defining yourself by what you’re not.” Her supporters may feel that in a race against Trump the contrast is enough, and as a matter of principle they may be right. But insisting that allegations are old and tired—and that your opponent has done worse—may leave voters feeling exhausted. One of the dangers of this election is that Americans will become demoralized and disaffected. They may even come to see politics as someone else’s problem. ♦