Feisty Bill Clinton takes on the NYT

Bill Clinton is privately pushing back against the idea that he’s become frail and will play a more limited role on his wife’s impending 2016 campaign than he did in her 2008 bid.

During a private Clinton Foundation fundraiser last week in Austin, Texas, Clinton rejected the premise of a March 29 New York Times story that described him as looking “older than his 68 years” and detailed efforts by Hillary Clinton advisers “to harness both the rare gifts and rash impulses” of the former president.


The piece was more appropriately characterized as “creative writing” than news, Bill Clinton told donors to his family’s foundation, according to someone with knowledge of the event.

Asked about Clinton’s dig at the story, Matt McKenna, a spokesman for the former president, pointed out that a correction had been appended to the bottom of the story. It indicated that the story had “referred imprecisely to the driver of Mr. Clinton’s S.U.V. The vehicle is driven by a United States Secret Service agent; Mr. Clinton is not ‘chauffeured.’”

Bill Clinton’s role in his wife’s planned presidential campaign has attracted intense interest in the political world.

During her 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he was a frequent and popular presence on the campaign trail, but also a sometimes polarizing force.

Over the course of the campaign, he grew progressively more angry over what he and other Clinton associates considered a media double standard that resulted in much harsher coverage for his wife than for her opponent, then-Sen. Barack Obama.

In January 2008, Clinton called media coverage of Obama’s stance against the Iraq War “ the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”

And, as Obama’s eventual victory became a fait accompli, Clinton increasingly lashed out against a growing enemies list. During a May 2008 conference call with major donors to his wife’s campaign — audio of which was obtained by POLITICO — he attributed Hillary Clinton’s flagging support among superdelegates to “pressure from the Obama side, from the media, from the MoveOn crowd — who they think is an automatic ATM machine for everybody for life. So, they’re reluctant to take on all that.”

According to last month’s Times story, Hillary Clinton’s advisers are involving her husband in strategic planning. But they also are contemplating attaching a senior aide to him on the campaign trail in an effort to keep him on message.

The fundraiser at which Clinton attacked the story was held at the home of Patsy and Jack Martin, a former Democratic consultant who is CEO of the global public relations firm Hill+Knowlton Strategies. Attendees included unsuccessful Texas Democratic gubernatorial nominees Wendy Davis, Bill White and Garry Mauro, among others. Tickets were $5,000 per person, or $25,000 per couple to be listed as a co-chair, according to an invitation.