We are not going to be shot of Bill Clinton for many, many years. Yesterday’s newspapers were full of reports that Mr Clinton has his eyes on a new position, Mayor of New York City, at the end of a week in which it’s been impossible to avoid his chaperone, Hillary, and her memoirs.

Bill Clinton has only to open his mouth for the world’s media to report it as akin to the next chapter of Proverbs. When he spoke at last year’s Labour Party conference he was greeted as a combination of FDR, Elvis Presley, Aneuran Bevan and George Best rolled into one.

Forget the fact that Mr Clinton is a serial liar and adulterer — and that’s just what he (finally) admits to. What matters most is that he was an awful President.

He enjoyed astonishing good fortune with the economy and introduced some successful welfare reforms (after being left with no choice by Congressional Republicans). But only if you think that the answer to terror is to bomb the crap out of somewhere, just because you can, would you think that Bill Clinton was a decent President. When terrorists murdered 258 people in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, he fired cruise missiles at Khartoum — to zero effect on terror. The most common cry from the rest of the world after 9/11 was that the US should not “kick out” and bomb someone for the sake of it. That had so often been President Clinton’s response that many were rather startled when a US President was, instead, deliberate, targeted and specific in his action against the Taleban. Bill Clinton has only ever followed that rubric in furtherance of more earthy pursuits.

Don’t believe for a second, though, any of the reports about him standing for Mayor of New York City. They have all the telltale signs of what is known as “utter rubbish”: “Friends of Mr Clinton (a man who once shook hands with him and last year sat at the next table to Hillary in the Old Ebbitt Grill) have been urging him (the ‘friend’ told his wife, who told her hairdresser, who thought it would be ‘neat’) to consider running (the thought has never crossed Mr Clinton’s mind but, heh, it makes a fun story)”.

But the fact that this story is nonsense doesn’t, of course, mean that either he or his wife are going to pack up and go away. As if. Mrs Clinton’s book is, after all, simply a job application for the presidency — 1.3 million job applications, given the number printed. And if you think Bill was bad, cast your mind back to the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do in her life: heading her husband's healthcare reform project. Beside that disaster, the eruption of Krakatoa was merely an unexpected visit to the sauna. She lacked the most basic grasp of policy, had no managerial skills, and was without any political savvy. Nothing in her record suggests she would make even a competent chief executive of a small family business, let alone CEO of the world’s hyperpower.

The common assumption is that the only way back to the White House for Clinton B is as Clinton H’s First Man. Not in his mind. The small matter of never-ending scandal, impeachment, and narrowly avoiding prosecution are but pimples on the otherwise perfectly-formed backside of Bill Clinton’s career. If he hadn’t been barred by the US Constitution’s 22nd Amendment, which prevents anyone serving more than two terms as President, he would certainly have tried to run again. And, most likely, again. And again. After all, George Bush struggled to beat even so hapless and hopeless a campaigner as Al Gore. What chance would he have had against the snake oil salesman par excellence?

Indeed, if it wasn’t for the 22nd Amendment, the fantasy of the 86-year-old Clinton running for dog catcher might be more frightening still. Strom Thurmond retired from the Senate at the age of 100 at the end of last year. Anything Strom can do, Bill can do better.

One of Mr Clinton’s few substantive proposals since leaving the White House has been to call for a repeal of the amendment. He says that he himself would have no intention of running again. Of course not. Just as when he told the people of Arkansas that if they elected him governor, there were no circumstances in which he would seek the presidency. Sex with an intern, sex with a nightclub singer, running for office — they’re all fertile territory for Slick Willy’s lies.

Stephen Pollard is a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe

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