During his eight years in the White House, there was one area in the East Wing that Bill Clinton simply loved: the kitchen. There, the president, who was always trying to lose weight, would often sneak a slice of fruit pie or mocha cake when nobody was looking.
The former president, said his pastry chef Roland Mesnier, “loves cherry pie.”
Now, as he eyes a return to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in the role of “first gentleman,” it looks unlikely that he will step into the East Wing, even the kitchen. A vegan on a decade-long health kick, aides say he has little interest in the traditional first lady role and is much more likely to become President Hillary Clinton’s roving ambassador or Mr. Fix It.
In fact, Hillary Clinton has suggested an economic role, though other insiders see him acting as an international diplomat for America.
“There’s not even kind of pretext about him in the East Wing, of course he won’t be picking out china,” Melanne Verveer, who was Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff in the White House, told the author of a just-published book on first ladies.
“You certainly cannot expect him to sit on the sidelines,” added pollster John Zogby.
And presidential expert Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution said, “Bill Clinton is and will always be irrepressible.”
Kate Anderson Brower, author of the New York Times bestseller First Women, has talked to several Clinton insiders and said that unlike first ladies, Clinton will have a totally different role because he is a past president. She expects Hillary Clinton to hire one or two professional social secretaries to handle traditional East Wing jobs, such as planning state dinners.
“This is about a larger-than-life former president. I don’t think it’s going to change the role of first lady for the person who comes in after him,” she said.
The insiders said he has several roles to choose from. One would be the economy czar, though some warned it would take the No. 1 job of a president away from Hillary Clinton and overshadow her presidency. Another was as diplomatic emissary because he knows most world leaders through the family’s Clinton Global Initiative.
A final would be as a Mr. Fix-It, as he did with former President George H.W. Bush, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the deadly earthquake in Haiti.
But he also is a potential headache for Hillary Clinton.
First is his role in the CGI. Bill Clinton has indicated he plans to stay on, but several outside advisers said that would be a disaster. “It causes more complications for her,” Zogby said. “Is he going around the world selling access to the president of the United States?”
Second, if he takes an office in the West Wing, he may deliver what the Clintons once promised in their first presidential bid in 1992: a co-presidency. And that would undercut his wife.
“It’s her time to be president,” Brower said.
Zogby added, “Presidents always have to be looking over their shoulder to make sure that there isn’t anybody stepping on their toes and casting a shadow. And he’s a shadow-caster.”
He’s also a big talker, and if put back in the White House, he would suddenly find that he has a press corps assigned to watch his every move and trip, something he’s been free of since leaving office in 2001.
“We would expect anyone in this role to be accessible to reporters. That includes, but is not limited to, making events open to the media, having pooled coverage when there are space constraints and traveling with a press pool on domestic and foreign trips,” said the Wall Street Journal’s Carol Lee, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
No matter what he does, one thing’s for sure, Brower said: “The West Wing will take him a lot more seriously than any other first lady in history.”
