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Bill Clinton's ability to wow and cow is sharp as ever. A politician of President Clinton's manifest gifts always faces suspicion that he is being... well, not fully sincere, even when he's speaking passionately. That his words have been carefully weighed, edited, poll-tested, and edited some more. That after all these years, Bill Clinton is still triangulating.

Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard has a deeply cynical piece on the New York Times' campaign blog that explores the "strategic emotions" of Bill Clinton. I recommend it, not because the article is especially insightful (even Continetti acknowledges that his thesis isn't exactly new), but out of sheer wonder at the length of the analysis: 1,000 words on whether or not Clinton is a faker, excluding comments. Here's the gist:

It’s been said that Mr. Clinton’s recent feistiness has revealed a side of him previously unknown to most Americans. But this is incorrect: he is rather a master of what one might call “strategic emotion,” the use of tears or anger to comfort voters or intimidate the press. During his presidency Clinton lashed out at, among others, then-ABC White House correspondent Brit Hume in 1993; reporters who continued to raise questions about his involvement with Monica Lewinsky in 1998; and the Senate Republicans who rejected the 1999 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

These days the former president’s “outbursts” serve a dual purpose: they lend the impression that Senator Clinton is the insurgent running against the media-supported Obama, while also creating the illusion that it is the former president, not his wife, who is actually the candidate for the Democratic nomination. Far from hurting Senator Clinton — who also understands how to deploy strategic emotion, as we saw before the New Hampshire Democratic primary — former President Clinton effectively has rallied a coalition of Democrats to her cause.

Hillary Clinton might well be the Democrats' nominee. But what does it say about her -- and about her party -- if the reason for her nomination is her husband's red-faced diatribes? Is HRC's candidacy really a referendum on Bill Clinton's presidency? The idea is almost too preposterous to entertain, yet just plausible enough to be legit.

Update: Maybe Barack Obama had the right answer last night: "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."