Some British Conservative MPs are, according to the Sunday Telegraph, travelling across the pond to help in the campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton to secure her nomination as Democrat candidate for President in the autumn. This astonishing intelligence will cause more than just a few traditional Tories to choke on their cornflake, most of whom would think of Mrs. Clinton’s outlook on politics as being anathema to any British Conservative. To most of us she is, as far as her instincts go, indistinguishable from your average tax hard and spend hard, Statist Socialist.

There are two things which will trouble many Conservatives about this.

Firstly there is the problem of what happens if Barack Obama wins the nomination and goes on to be President or one of the Republicans wins in November. Neither is going to look favourably on a Conservative party that has not just expressed vague sympathies for this or that candidate but has actively endorsed an opponent and sent its members off to the USA physically to campaign against them.

That surely comes in Chapter One of the Book How to Win friends And Influence People under the subtitle It Comes With Mother’s Milk. Given that the Tories have a reasonable chance of forming a government circa 2009/2010, it strikes me as elementary to be able to start off on absolutely the right foot with whoever Americans might have chosen to be President from January 2009.

There is also an issue about good judgement: if a simple soul such as myself can see the pitfalls in this, why cannot these professional politicians see the inherent dangers? One might also add that the meddling is not confined to the Clinton campaign: David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party recently made some favourable remarks about John McCain which might be thought equally out of order in the middle of a campaign.

Which brings me to the second point: it is for Americans to choose the next president, not British MPs. It is, surely, not right that foreigners should actively campaign in another country’s politics, though I would make an exception where there is a genuine bond of apolitical friendship between them and also where someone is properly employed on a contractual or salaried basis to give professional advice.

But simply to pitch up and go out on the streets or work the telephones actively to campaign is something which I for one would find offensive and quite unacceptable. I am sure that most British people would be deeply irritated if a load of French, Italian and German Socialist MPs flew over to the UK to campaign in marginal constituencies on behalf of Gordon Brown.

What also puzzles me is: why Clinton, when there are moderate Republicans who would be far closer in outlook to ourselves than her? It is said that modern Conservatives are uncomfortable with the neo-con thing and what is felt to be the unhealthy influence of the religious right, but looking at matters in the round either Senator John McCain (who gave a rather wooden speech to the Conservative Conference last year) or Rudy Giuliani would be a closer match to our own centre-right politics of the moment than would Mrs. Clinton.

On another tack altogether, here is an interesting possibility, suggested to me by the assertion, also in today’s Sunday Telegraph, that former President Bill Clinton will play a more major rôle in his wife’s Presidential campaign (if nominated) than even the Vice-Presidential nominee. I fully admit that the idea is a mischievous one, but so that you too might play the game might I suggest that you pull up a copy of the Twenty-Second Amendment to the US Constitution?

Now this may be in the realms of fantasy, but then who, even five years ago would have bet on the certainty that the Democratic candidate in the running for the nomination would be either a woman or from the Afro-American community? Besides my mischievous streak extends to lobbing grenades into well-ordered discussions just to see what happens.

As everyone knows, former President Bill Clinton is debarred from being elected as President ever again, by virtue of Section 1 of that amendment:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more that two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once.

But, as the quick amongst you will, I am sure, have spotted already, there is nothing in law which would prevent Bill Clinton from standing as and being elected to the office of Vice-President.
 
He could then, in theory, if his wife were to die or become incapacitated, assume the office of President of the United States, though he could never be elected to that office again, for up to four years before the next election were held. In those circumstances he would also hold in his hands the thus vacated office of Vice-President which would enable him to anoint as his successor someone who would then hold in his or her hands all the advantages of incumbency. Choose well and the Republicans would be out of the loop for sixteen years with a Clinton legacy set as firmly in stone as if the happy pair were already part of the Mount Rushmoor ensemble.
 
And, if there were concurrently a Democratic majority in both Houses, just think how powerful a President she would be with her fixer of a husband squaring things with Congress on a daily basis.
 
How about that for a nightmare for Republicans?
 
I am confident that the politics of this notion place it squarely, as I say, in the realms of fantasy, but then sometimes it is worth thinking the unthinkable. And such exercises are fun as well.
 
Perhaps I should, in this post, do no more than throw the floor open to discussion so that we can see just how much you Republicans out there dislike the Clintons and whether I can give you nightmares or not… or for that matter to see how much some Democrats dislike them.