High Noon for the ‘Comeback Kid?’

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by MARK POWELL

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The biggest show in Washington, D.C. this month won’t be the annual State of the Union Address on February 24 (much as president Donald Trump would beg to differ with that assessment). Instead, it will happen a few days later when Hillary Clinton answers questions under oath from congressional investigators about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Bill Clinton’s turn will come the next day.

Last week’s abrupt about-face, with the former first couple suddenly agreeing to testify, heads off the messy prospect of being held in contempt of Congress after months of brazenly defying subpoenas. They not only appear to have experienced an eleventh-hour change of heart, but they’re now drawing attention to the very interrogations they so strenuously resisted.

The Clintons are doubling down, urging House oversight committee chairman James Comer to make their testimony public.

“Let’s stop the games,” Hillary Clinton posted on social media last Thursday morning. “You love to talk about transparency. There’s nothing more transparent than a public hearing, cameras on.”

Bill Clinton piled on the following day, stating “I will not sit idly as they use me as a prop in a closed-door kangaroo court by a Republican Party running scared.”

“If they want answers, let’s stop the games and do this the right way: in a public hearing, where the American people can see for themselves what this is really about,” Clinton said.

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For his part, Comer insists he’s sticking with the standard congressional playbook for such high-profile depositions. He and his GOP colleagues insist closed-door testimony will keep the focus on getting credible evidence while also preventing the depositions from transforming into a two-ring media circus.

“Too late for that,” a Washington-based GOP strategist said this week. “That ship has already sailed. But this thing isn’t about transparency or truthfulness, as each camp claims. What’s really at stake here is controlling the message.”

That would explain why Comer is adamant about keeping the questioning out of the public eye. The Clintons are master practitioners in the art of deflection, after all.

When word of the Monica Lewinsky scandal first broke in January 1998, it was Hillary Clinton who famously said on the Today show that the root of the allegations was “this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”

Bill Clinton would later garnish that with his infamous denial – “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky” – only to concede seven months later (after being painted into a corner) that he, in fact, “did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate.”

It should be remembered Bill Clinton attempted to muddy the waters during his deposition with another infamous line – “it depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” For her part, Hillary Clinton has a reputation for bristling when asked questions she doesn’t want to hear. After hours of intense grilling by the Senate foreign relations committee on the deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya that claimed four American lives, she thumped the table, raised her voice, and eventually demanded, “what difference, at this point, does it make?”

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RELATED | ‘FINAL’ EPSTEIN RELEASE RAISES MORE QUESTIONS

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The Clintons’ ability to reframe – and rewrite – narratives in their favor extends far beyond that, though, stretching all the way back to the winter of 1992.

At that time, then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He was gaining in polls heading into New Hampshire’s first-in-the-national presidential primary when a scandal threatened to derail his candidacy. A long-time acquaintance, Gennifer Flowers, claimed she’d had an affair with the married governor. A joint appearance by the Clintons on 60 Minutes, in which Hillary Clinton adamantly defended her husband, was credited with saving his presidential chances.

Both Clintons denied the Flowers’ affair during the interview – but Bill Clinton would ultimately admit to it during the fallout from the Lewinsky allegations in 1998.

At the time, though, the ruse worked. When the voters were all counted on February 18, 1992, Clinton had earned a respectable second-place showing in the Granite State, enabling him to proclaim, “New Hampshire tonight has made Bill Clinton the Comeback Kid.”

He liked his self-bestowed nickname and frequently referred to himself by it during the eight years of his presidency. His supporters loved it, too, and they reliably mobilized the Democratic base to stick with him during tough times, including his 1998-99 impeachment and Senate trial.

But if the Clintons expect that kind of response in 2026, they could be in for an unpleasant surprise. Blame it on a classic case of “that was then, this is now.”

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Time has marched on, the Democratic base has dramatically changed, and the unsavory crimes that Epstein facilitated are enough to make would-be defenders think twice about coming to the rescue.

The ‘Comeback Kid’ is a kid no longer. The man who once positioned himself as a political hipster by wearing sunglasses while playing the saxophone on television turns 80 in August. Bill Clinton is now a relic from a bygone era. In fact, he’s the last living president who served in the 20th Century. Young voters who enjoyed watching him blow “Heartbreak Hotel” on the sax on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992 are grandparents in 2026.

Making matters worse, Clinton campaigned as a centrist Democrat back then, slightly more liberal than what the country had known during the Reagan-Bush dozen years, but not enough to alarm Wall Street. While that approach played well in its day, it’s now as outdated as “I Like Ike” and “All the Way With LBJ.”

Although Clinton had worked on Democrat George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, he learned the lesson from its 49-state defeat. Too liberal translated into DOA for a Democrat. Hence, Clinton hugged the safety of the middle of the road.  

Today, the Far Left has rebranded itself as progressives, and they advocate an agenda that makes McGovern’s uber liberalism (for its time) look as stodgy as William Howard Taft’s policies. In their eyes, there’s no longer any place for a centrist approach.

Finally, the bloc that’s steering the progressive movement is affluent, educated, white, college-educated liberal women. They are ferocious, ideologically rigid, well-organized, and equate compromise with surrender. And they would not be induced to interrupt protesting ICE, blasting Israel as Zionist, and calling for Trump’s head on a platter to provide cover for a former president they know only from history books.

So, as the Clintons aggressively try to move their upcoming depositions into the public arena, their advisors would do well to ask them, “are you really sure you want to do that?”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.

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