Loyalty and the Clintons: how far does it go?

By Jeff Mason - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If loyalty is the currency of politics, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton should have a full coffer to tap for her U.S. presidential bid.

But the former first lady and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who prize loyalty from their wide national support base, are struggling to keep that allegiance alive at a time when they need it the most.

Clinton is fighting for her political life, trying to sway so-called superdelegates -- party leaders and elected officials -- to stick with her in the race against front-runner and rival Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton, observers say, is fiercely devoted to her staff, and both she and her husband expect and usually receive allegiance from their associates.

But ties to Bill Clinton's administration have not always translated into support for his wife's candidacy, to the frustration of the former first couple.

"They start with the assumption that anybody who was with them in the (previous Clinton) administration, should be with them now, and when people decide to go to Obama, most of those people are in pretty bad standing," said one former Clinton White House staffer, who asked not to be named.

Sen. Clinton, that official said, was more forgiving than her husband if a supporter comes back to the fold, as some have done after backing candidates such as former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who bowed out of the Democratic race to face Republican John McCain in the November election.

"She's not stupid. She would rather have talented staff come back than waste a lot of energy icing them."

But "icing" does take place.

When New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former energy secretary and ambassador for Bill Clinton, endorsed Obama, he was tagged with a "Judas" label by an outraged member of the Clinton camp, former adviser James Carville.

"I believed that Richardson's appointments in Bill Clinton's administration and his longtime personal relationship with both Clintons ... merited a strong response," Carville wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.

NOT ALWAYS A TWO-WAY STREET

Richardson, who dropped his own presidential bid earlier this year, said the loyalty argument had been taken too far.

"Carville and others say that I owe President Clinton's wife my endorsement because he gave me two jobs," he wrote in a separate Washington Post opinion piece.

"Do the people now attacking me recall that I ran for president, albeit unsuccessfully, against Senator Clinton? Was that also an act of disloyalty?"