Recent headlines haven't lessened fears that Hillary Clinton 2016 would be just like 2008. | REUTERS Clinton dramas: Here we go again

Tabloid headlines. Personal dramas. Organizational disarray. Score-settling between rival factions documented in news accounts like a soap opera.

Does this have a familiar ring?


No one — or mostly no one — truly believes the swirl of headlines surrounding Bill and Hillary Clinton in the summer of 2013 should lead to a grand conclusion about whether another iteration of a Clinton campaign can be run effectively, free of the internecine warfare and incessant drama that marked her 2008 bid.

But if Clinton and her supporters were hoping to allay those doubts well ahead of a possible 2016 run, the past few months have not been helpful.

( PHOTOS: Who’s talking about Hillary 2016?)

Clinton supporters would point out, fairly, that much of what has happened to them this summer — the steady stream of unseemly stories about Anthony Weiner’s continued virtual liaisons, his wife and Clinton confidante Huma Abedin’s very public decision to stand by him, and reports of mismanagement at the Clinton Foundation — has been beyond their control.

But it has all still renewed the question that hangs over Hillary Clinton: Has she learned from the mistakes of the past, and can she finally break some recurring cycles in her public life? Can she manage a functional, and focused, national campaign?

That probably can’t be fully answered unless and until Hillary Clinton clarifies whether she plans to run for president. Only then, when she assembles a new team and makes clear whether she is bringing on new blood amid the old Clinton hands, will it become clear what the latest iteration of a Clinton campaign looks like.

Unwanted coverage of the Clinton Foundation and the years leading up to Hillary Clinton’s arrival at its office has converged with the messiness of the Weiner-Abedin story. There has also been an element to some of the details in both storylines — people taking sides in a semipublic way in media accounts — that left some recalling the airing of dirty laundry after her 2008 campaign.

( PHOTOS: How close are Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton?)

Her supporters say it’s not the Clintons’ fault that the husband of one of the former secretary of state’s closest aides had more private baggage dumped in the middle of his mayoral campaign. And the Clintons were only trying to fix the internal problems at the family foundation detailed in a New York Times piece last week that highlighted questions about lax oversight and conflicts of interest, those same backers argue. The story described budgetary concerns and Bill Clinton’s own determination two years ago that things were “a mess” organizationally.

They also insist that the Clinton operation is stronger and leaner throughout than before. And the foundation has had some of the growing pains one would anticipate from what Clinton officials have called a “start-up.”

The consensus among Clinton allies whose support dates back decades is some version of this: Bill Clinton and his wife have done enough good work to mitigate the periodic bouts of negativity from their world.

( PHOTOS: Bill Clinton’s life and career)

But the coverage of late has been a reminder to Democratic operatives, Clinton donors and even their allies of years past.

Asked his take on the latest round of headlines involving the Clintons over the past month, former Bill Clinton adviser James Carville said, “Thus it was, thus it is and thus it shall be.”

“It’s always gonna be,” he added. “And if anybody thinks that it’s gonna change, they’re crazy.”

Yet he added that the global charitable work Bill Clinton has done, combined with his wife’s tenure at the State Department, are positives that often go overlooked.

( PHOTOS: The Clinton-Obama relationship)

“I think the Clinton-haters come out of the woodwork,” he said. “And if anybody thinks that’s not gonna happen they’re crazy. And I think if we’ve learned anything through all of this you deal with it is as it is and things turn out pretty good. Yes, it’s a little bit, ‘Oh God. We went through that [in the 1990s]. If the Clintons come back we’re just gonna have the viciousness and the anger of the ’90s. … [without anyone named Clinton] we’ll get a fresh start.’

“Well that really worked out well, didn’t it?”

What’s more, a number of Democrats make a distinction between the worlds of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton — suggesting she has historically tended to be a better overseer, notwithstanding 2008. Such divisions are less noticeable now, as their orbits become interlocked with Hillary Clinton joining her husband’s foundation. Her team is trimmed down and primarily composed of people who were with her at the State Department, where drama was mostly absent, people close to her say.

Still, the sighs of concern could be heard all along the Acela corridor after a month of stories that zeroed in on Abedin, the beleaguered wife of Weiner, and how Clintonland was handling the onslaught. The coverage of the foundation, which two years ago entered a new phase in its life, has also been intense, focusing largely on the battles between two factions of longtime Bill Clinton loyalists who were running it.

The nervousness among her supporters was palpable as the Clintons were forced to swat back at Weiner, who violated a certain code by joking that he had knowledge of how Abedin would be deployed for Clinton in 2016.

“It’s always drama,” said one longtime Clinton supporter who, like almost everyone interviewed for this story, asked not to be identified. But the person quickly added, “There’s a lot more good than bad.”

Still, there is another school of thought that there is a “direct line” between the current headlines — which have in many ways underscored the fact that Clinton efforts have tended to be stacked with a small coterie of aides — and the questions about mismanagement in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign.

That campaign, in short, was viewed as a model of dysfunction. The Team of Rivals model meant separate teams of advisers sparring. When Clinton threw the first leadership team overboard as part of a reboot, she empowered a second faction.

“There’s just this division that constantly exists there,” said one senior Democrat, noting that other politicians’ staffs are marked by the same kind of internal tensions but don’t make news nearly as often.

Clinton insiders say the recent attention is just the latest round of media-driven nonsense.

The couple can’t control what Anthony Weiner does with his cellphone camera any more than they can control the weather. Their concern for Abedin is genuine, they point out, and there is a shelf life to the tabloid fodder Weiner presents — the New York City mayoral primary is on Sept. 10, and he is extremely unlikely to make the runoff.

“On every front, things are better, significantly better, than five years ago,” said one Clinton ally familiar with her operation.

If anything, Clinton allies argue, the intense interest in dissecting her every move — and, they argue, manufacturing controversies — is what is driving the circuslike atmosphere. (To that end, Media Matters for America, the liberal media-watching site founded by Hillary Clinton ally David Brock, has been condemning coverage everywhere, but especially at the Times, as overwrought.)

“This is the media having sport in the middle of summer,” said former Clinton White House spokesman Mike McCurry.

“The media obsession with the Clintons creates stories about the coverage of the coverage of the Clintons. … The answer is simple: stop it, and [the issue] will go away.”

To that end, while Anthony Weiner has lunged wildly at the Clintons, they have not returned the favor. Bill Clinton has been rigorously on-message in talking — or, more precisely, not talking — about the mayoral race.

Nothing in 2013 is dispositive about whether Hillary Clinton has learned how to keep factionalism from taking over a campaign, these allies say. And given her name, people will perpetually be interested in covering her.

“I just think her situation in respect to the Democratic Party is that she has ubiquitous support and issues of this nature — the family foundation, any kind of stuff like that — I think people are going to shrug their shoulders and say they do an awful lot of good for an awful lot of people, “ said Democratic strategist Tad Devine.