Bill Clinton is Max Bialystock...

Max Bia­ly­stock: The two car­di­nal rules of pro­duc­ing. One: Never put your own money in the show.

Leo Bloom: And two?

Max Bia­ly­stock: Never put your own money in the show!

The Pro­duc­ers 2005

In both ver­sions of The Pro­duc­ers and in the Broad­way play. Max Bia­ly­stock raises money for his plays by div­ing into “lit­tle old lady land”

This came to mind when I saw this story at Politico:

Amid spec­u­la­tion that Hillary Clin­ton might make a run for the pres­i­dency in 2016, her hus­band is tak­ing another swing at shrink­ing her lin­ger­ing 2008 cam­paign debt, which totals $73,000 as of Sept. 30.

In an email to sup­port­ers Wednes­day, Bill Clin­ton offered a chance to spend a day with him if donors chipped in to drive down his wife’s cam­paign debt before Dec. 6.

That Hillary might still have cam­paign debt 4 years after the race was not a big sur­prise, as the arti­cle says it was as high as 25 Mil­lion at one point, but what really struck me was the fig­ure that is left after four years.

$73,000

Now for me and you $73,000 is a lot of money. If I had $73,000 more that I do now it would have a dra­matic effect on my life and prospects, but Bill Clin­ton?

That thought seems to be a gen­eral theme in com­ments at Politico this one is typical:

$73,000??? Hon­estly, doesn’t Bill earn some­thing like $100,000/speech. Maybe he could sign up for one more gig and pay the bill him­self — or pos­si­bly Hillary could earn a few shekels now that she’s retiring.

That is the big dif­fer­ence between Bill Clin­ton and the fic­tional Max Bia­ly­stock. Max was wear­ing a card­board belt and needed to dive into lit­tle old lady land to do any­thing. Bill Clin­ton turned his polit­i­cal career into a vast for­tune. He could pay this debt off with no effort, his wel­com­ing ladies young and old into pres­i­den­tial kneepad land is likely purely recre­ational. This fact obscures an over­rid­ing truth about the Bill Clin­ton way.

Yes it’s true Bill Clin­ton can retire this debt him­self if he chooses to, but why would he choose to? As long as there are demo­c­rat donors will­ing to spend their money why would he ever think about pay­ing this himself?

This not only makes him the per­fect patron saint for the Demo­c­rat party but would make him an excel­lent Hol­ly­wood or Broad­way producer.