Decision-Making Quote by Stuart Rothenberg

Politics, in Rothenberg's dry calculus, is less about affection than about risk management. The line treats Bill Clinton not as an elder statesman but as a volatile asset: complicated, potent, and impossible to pretend isn’t in the room. The operative word is "risky" - a reminder that campaigns are insurance policies written in real time, priced by headlines, donors, and swing voters.

The intent is strategic counsel disguised as common sense. Rothenberg is implicitly addressing John Kerry's 2004 operation, which faced a familiar Democratic dilemma: the party’s most charismatic modern figure also carried baggage and a talent for sucking oxygen from any event he attends. To "embrace" Clinton is to borrow his political magic - retail charm, fundraising prowess, the nostalgia of 1990s prosperity - while betting that voters will compartmentalize scandal fatigue or see it as old news. To "reject" him, though, is to generate a different kind of story: panic, disunity, moral posturing, or, worst of all, an admission that Clinton still defines the party and Kerry can’t control the association.

The subtext is that absence is louder than presence. Clinton’s endorsement doesn’t need to be a centerpiece; it just needs to be normal. The campaign that keeps him at arm’s length invites reporters to ask why, and in politics, "why" is where narratives metastasize. Rothenberg’s cynicism is quiet but sharp: you don’t choose the most flattering option, you choose the one that produces the fewest self-inflicted wounds.