The Agony of Defeat

The UK Telegraph has an interesting snippet in a piece about Bill Clinton:

A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could "kiss my ass" in return for his support.

As I've noted before, the press can spare us all the observations about John McCain's temperament issues, given that we heard so little about temperament during the term of a Democrat two-term President who obviously has issues.

Obviously, Clinton is unhappy at the prospect of being eclipsed by a younger, equally charismatic (and perhaps even more slippery) man in the person of Barack Obama. What's more, his wife's loss in the primary deprives him of an opportunity to rack up some historical achievement besides having been a placeholder between Bush pere and fils (and, of course, Monica Lewinsky).

What's more, he understands that his wife is caught between two competing necessities -- that of seeing Barack lose (so that she can run again before she hits her late '60s and time passes her by), and making sure that she can be in no way blamed for his loss, in order to maintain her political viability. And that must chafe him, too.

No wonder he's angry.