ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Hillary Clinton would like you to believe she’s in the unenviable position of having a husband who served eight years as president of the United States.



She often says she must be evaluated on her own record, not husband Bill Clinton’s, when voters go to the election booths. She’s distanced herself from his administration when it comes to trade agreements, toughness on crime and Wall Street deregulation.



Yet — she often embraces him — citing his record as president and her work as first lady as reason why she will be a good commander in chief.



I’m sorry, Mrs. Clinton, but you can’t have it both ways.



If you want to take credit for work you did as first lady in your husband’s administration — and imply your influence on his policies — then you need to take the good with the bad.



Mrs. Clinton running away her husband’s administration, then toward it, was in full force at Thursday night’s debate, when Mrs. Clinton tried to distance herself from her husband’s 1994 crime bill, but then wanted to take credit for the progress his administration made in the Middle East.



When asked if Mr. Clinton’s crime bill — which criminal-justice advocates are now saying has unfairly lead to mass incarceration of young men of color — Mrs. Clinton had no problem blaming her husband for the passage of the bill.



Asked if she regretted her advocacy for it, Mrs. Clinton said: “Well, look, I supported the crime bill. My husband has apologized. He was the president who actually signed it.”



Ouch.



Yet, Mrs. Clinton had no problem heralding her husband later in the debate when it came to Israel and Palestinian relations.



After Mrs. Clinton said Israel had a right to defend itself, and that she would do everything she could to try to reach a two-state solution, she suggested her husband’s administration helped her boost her own resume in order to deal with the Middle East.



“Let me say this, if [former Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat had agreed with my husband at Camp David in the late 1990s to the offer then-Prime Minister Barak put on the table, we would have had a Palestinian state for 15 years,” Mrs. Clinton bragged of both her insight into that deal as first lady, and her husband’s negotiating prowess.



She then called out rival Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders as being naive on the issue and touted her experience as first lady as part of the reason she’s better equipped to be commander in chief.



“Well, if I — I want to add, you know, again describing the problem is a lot easier than trying to solve it,” Mrs. Clinton said in retort to Mr. Sanders on the topic of Israel. “And I have been involved, both as first lady with my husband’s efforts, as a senator supporting the efforts that even the Bush administration was undertaking, and as secretary of state for President Obama.”



Mrs. Clinton has also touted her work as first lady in developing a plan for universal health coverage, something she frequently brings up in debates.



“Before there was something called Obamacare, there was something called Hillarycare. And we’re now at 90 percent of coverage; I’m going to get us to 100 percent,” Mrs. Clinton said on Thursday night.



Yet when it comes to trade deals, tough on crime measures, and the deregulation of Wall Street (which happened under her husband’s watch), Mrs. Clinton would like you to believe she had no influence as first lady, and that’s his record — not hers.



Cherry-picking the issues that look good in hindsight. Check. Saying the decisions made by her husband’s administration can’t be reflective of her own, until they can. How political. How Hillary Clinton.

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