Attorney General Hillary Rodham Clinton...in 1993.

From what I've read on the matter, there was some speculation as to the possibility of Hillary Clinton being put somewhere in the cabinet in the early Clinton years, likely at Attorney General, citing her own law career. Besides the obvious questions of nepotism that plagued JFK when he put his brother at the helm in 1961, what could this mean, if it goes ahead, for Bill Clinton in the early 1990s?
 
TNF: For RFK the issue was less his age than his quals. He never privately practiced law, or litigated a case before he became AG (a grand total of two in person). Why do you think all the senior deputies were university professors like Cox and Katzenbach? Hillary would face the nepotism charge, but not the quals charge because she'd had over two decades in private practice.
 
The is a Federal law that now bands the President from appointing a relative to the cabinet. It came into existence because of JFK's appointment of his brother as attorney General.
 
From what I've read on the matter, there was some speculation as to the possibility of Hillary Clinton being put somewhere in the cabinet in the early Clinton years, likely at Attorney General, citing her own law career. Besides the obvious questions of nepotism that plagued JFK when he put his brother at the helm in 1961, what could this mean, if it goes ahead, for Bill Clinton in the early 1990s?
hillary would be qualified (although perhaps not the best pick for the job). But remember, at the time she isn't really anybody on the political scene. Both Clintons are going to face a wall of flack over nepotism, and once the Hillary haters start coalescing...

for the recond, i cant remember hearing any of this speculation, but my guess is that it is the sort of generally mindless speculation that talking heads and "pundits" start spouting whenever some vacancy or other needs to be filled, and somebody famous is somehow connected...
 
I would think that although Hilary might do pretty good, many Americans would call it Nepotism, although it might be, I could see the Senate getting involved, the Supreme Court, Congress, and protests.
 

cbrunish

Banned
Actually we would see "Slick Willie" get burned for his "I did not have sex with that woman". Nothing worse than a woman scorned. :D:D:D
 
From what I've read on the matter, there was some speculation as to the possibility of Hillary Clinton being put somewhere in the cabinet in the early Clinton years, likely at Attorney General, citing her own law career. Besides the obvious questions of nepotism that plagued JFK when he put his brother at the helm in 1961, what could this mean, if it goes ahead, for Bill Clinton in the early 1990s?

Was this ever anything more than idle DC Villager speculation in early '93?

I remember as a precocious youth reading a suggestion that Jimmy Carter could be Clinton's secretary of state, which now seems ridiculous, but was obviously written at a time when it looked like Bubba would govern as a continuum of the Cold War liberals--and some people were smart enough to perceive that Carter not only had diplomatic chops (Camp David) but was untainted by any foreign policy corruption scandals, unlike the Reaganites and the Bushies. But it wouldn't have worked.

But Hilary as AG? Apart from the federal law that chris N mentions, there's the fact that she hadn't worked fulltime in government service since the seventies (in a junior position), while RFK was a Capitol Hill committee staffer in the years immediately before Camelot (and a high profile one at that.)

Hilary in 1993 is probably as unqualified to lead the Department of Justice as Mitchell was in '69. And John Mitchell avoided any damaging criticism of his lack of public service qualifications because, well, it's not as if he entered office in the post-Watergate era of good governance reforms.
 
Yah, there was a law passed post-RFK which barred Presidents from putting close relations into the cabinet.

I do believe that there was (allegedly) thought by Clinton (and this says a lot if it's true) to nominating Hillary for the White supreme court vacancy. Now wouldn't that have been a hoot.
 
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