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Former President Bill Clinton introduces his wife, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., while she stands with their daughter, Chelsea, at a rally in Charleston, S.C. on Jan. 25. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

It is now apparent to the electorate that it is inappropriate to refer to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton alone—she is clearly campaigning along with a co-president, Bill Clinton. The ex-president went on a rampage of speeches and interviews following Hillary’s loss in Iowa. He has gained increasing attention, culminating in his disastrous attempt to race-bait during the South Carolina primary.

Bill’s intervention to save his wife’s campaign for the Democratic nomination may have fatally harmed her prospects in the long run. In the months preceding Iowa, Mrs. Clinton had done a fairly good job of trying to present herself as a candidate in her own right—one who was campaigning on her own merits. She gingerly alluded to her years as First Lady; she walked a tightrope between taking credit for the positive aspects of Bill’s tenure while inoculating herself from the many scandals and failures of the Clinton presidency.

As long as Bill was kept somewhat on the sidelines, Hillary made only occasional references to Bill and the 1990’s. However, once Obama’s campaign began to produce outstanding results, Hillary changed course and allowed her husband to take center stage. This became striking and alarming: for several days prior to the South Carolina primary, Bill was so preeminent that he was the only Clinton campaigning in that state. His profile was augmented to the point that it prompted a question at the last Democratic debate in Los Angeles as to whether Hillary can keep her husband “in control.” Obama has also alluded with contempt to the partnership by stating: “Sometimes I don’t know who I am campaigning against.”

Bill’s increased visibility has shattered three illusions. The first illusion which has dissolved is that Hillary has enough confidence to pursue her political ambitions on her own. Time and again, when there is a crisis, she turns to Bill. The carefully contrived attempts by her campaign managers to portray Hillary as strong and experienced have been exposed as mere window-dressing. She appears to be simply Bill Clinton’s puppet: the woman whom Bill is using as a smokescreen in order to get back into the White House to rehabilitate his tarnished legacy.

The second illusion which has crumbled is the possibility that if Hillary wins the nomination, the public will be spared another debate on the 1990’s. Bill’s high profile will now make this impossible. Hillary has thus handed the Republicans their ace: by looping herself so inexorably with her husband during this campaign, her opponents will now be able to loop all of Bill’s scandals around her neck. This is a noose that will only tighten.

The Wall Street Journal stepped up the pressure on February 2 with an editorial calling for the immediate release of all records pertaining to Hillary’s role as First Lady. There are two million pages which are being held at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and which, it is clear, are being deliberately kept from public scrutiny. Evidently, the Clintons are stonewalling. The documents are sure to shed light on the role Hillary played in the many Bill Clinton scandals. If Hillary is the nominee, her Republican opponents are going to ensure that these issues are revisited in the fall—with added emphasis on Hillary’s complicity.

And finally, the third illusion uncovered is that Hillary is as rotten as Bill. Recent events have demonstrated that Bill and Hillary are, and always have been, as one in their self-absorption and corruption. During Bill’s first term in office, Hillary was perceived by the public as a cold, calculating ideologue. Her public image was greatly improved by the Lewinsky scandal: her humiliation roused public sympathy. She tried desperately to re-invent herself as Senator for New York and for seven years appeared to be living a life, both public and private, which was separate from Bill’s. By 2007 she had traveled a long way in burying much of the negative aspects of her past. Yet, by sanctioning the recent spate of cheap tricks in her campaign, it is no longer possible to see her as the “victim” of Bill’s excesses; she is and always has been his partner in scandal and corruption.

Hillary’s nasty streak is evident in the manner in which she and Bill have been complicit in trying to derail Obama’s candidacy. They initially hired a team of private investigators to look into Obama’s past to determine whether he had been educated in a madrassa. When the chattering classes roundly denounced the attempt to portray Obama as a Muslim, the Clintons then emphasized Obama’s past drug use. This too was roundly assaulted as cheap and dirty. Bill and Hillary then stooped even lower: Bill tried to cast doubt on Obama’s record by declaring that a vote for him would be akin to “rolling the dice.” The Clintons were insinuating that Obama is a political lightweight who does not really know what he is doing. Bill sought to undermine Obama’s anti-Iraq war stance by referring to it as a “fairy tale.” He also tried to couch Obama as somewhat sympathetic to the Republicans due to a comment Obama made regarding Reagan as “a transformational president.” In each instance, pundits and the public informed the Clintons that their spin was simply unacceptable.

The height of Clintonian sleaze in the campaign so far has been their attempt to incite a race war within the Democratic Party. During the South Carolina primary, Bill tried to present Obama as the “black candidate.” Bill and Hillary were tacitly trying to drum up Hispanic and white racial prejudices against the African American candidate. This was so repulsive it caused an immediate backlash. Bill is now temporarily muzzled. But there is no way that Hillary can be exonerated from this: it is her campaign and she bears full responsibility. Evidently, Bill and Hillary are one of a kind—both nasty, degraded politicians who have no moral compass—which perhaps also explains why they have stayed together so long.

In sum, the last few months we have once again begun to see the size and scope of this ugly political union. Bill and Hillary have thus given Republicans an arsenal of weapons to use in a general campaign. The Clintons will be presented as co-presidents—a prospect which, according to the latest study by the Pew Research Center, is increasingly making Americans uncomfortable. The 1990’s will be discussed at great length—with all the sordid details bubbling to the surface again. And Hillary’s partially-rehabilitated image has been shattered; her ruthlessness is increasingly apparent to the electorate.

Hillary thought Bill could come to her rescue. But Bill is wearing a perilous reverse mirror: she now looks too much like him.  The “comeback Kid” and the “comeback Gal” have morphed into an American nightmare.

-Grace Vuoto is the Executive Director of the Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal. The opinions expressed are her own.