EXTREMELY RELEVANT POINT.

From the comments section of Nicholas Kristof’s blog, regarding his column “Hillary, Barack, Experience”:
Someone should raise an issue of whether the manner in which Bill Clinton is campaigning for Hillary Clinton is ethically, if not legally, appropriate of a former President. For what Bill Clinton has recently been doing on the campaign trail, especially the super-aggressive and abrasive manner in which he has been campaigning for Hillary Clinton, has been very undignified, to say the least, and has degraded the office of the U.S. President. Presidents, even after retirement, are accorded a very special status and role in the national and international affairs and are given special respect and courtesy by the entire nation. Using that special role and status to actively campaign for a particular individual, as opposed to merely expressing his general opinion or preference, seems to be wrong and seems to amount to a gross violation of etiquette and propriety, and possibly worse. Actually, Bill Clinton is not only acting like one of the low-level abusive political operatives do, which is clearly unbecoming of a former U.S. President but he is also acting almost as if he were running for another term of Presidency through his wife. Hillary, too, is claiming “experience,” as if she had also been a President (or, “co-President”), when Bill was. If we remember that Bill is not legally allowed to run for another term of Presidency, we can see that what Bill and Hillary are doing together is almost a violation of the law that prohibits more than two four-year terms of Presidency by one person. In other words, if Hillary was really a co-President when Bill Clinton served as President, then, at least in the spirit of the law, she should not be allowed to run for President because she had already served two four-year terms as co-President. If Bill Clinton implies that he will stand by Hillary in a special way, as if he were a co-President, if she is elected, then, he is violating the law himself. Of course, there is no law that states that one cannot run for the office of President if his or her spouse has served two four-year terms. But my point is that the relationship of husband and wife is so special that the law should, at least in spirit, be applied to a couple together. Or, at the least, a former President should give enough deference to the office of US President which he had previously occupied, and should not abuse that very special status and respect for political gains of any particular individual, let alone his family member, with the insinuation that she is his political alter ego.
Nathan Nahm
— Posted by Nathan Nahm