The American Spectator

Citing President Bush’s recent cameo appearance on NBC’s “Deal or No Deal,” former President Bill Clinton today suggested that his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, might want to appear on a network show, too, “like, I dunno, maybe ‘Wife Swap’ or something, you know, just to mix it up.”

Speaking to a crowd in Evansville, Ind., before the Indiana primary, Clinton said he saw the reaction President Bush got when his face popped up on the video screen on “Deal or No Deal,” and he thought his wife might generate a similarly positive reaction were she to switch places with Sen. Obama’s “very attractive” wife, Michelle, for a week.

“Come on now, who wouldn’t want to see that?” Clinton asked, presumably rhetorically. “Hillary and Barack havin’ to spend a week together as husband and wife while campaigning against each other? It’d be great! And me and Michelle having to spend a week together being campaign spouses, just sittin’ at home on the couch, all lonely, waiting for a phone call from the road most nights, then going on the trail, spending lots of nights stuck with nothing to do in nice hotel suites that have big Jacuzzi tubs and fully stocked mini bars? Oh, man, why didn’t I think of this before?!”

A spokesman for ABC said that although the network would “be thrilled” to have either of the presidential candidates on a show, he said he wasn’t sure the network could afford the liability insurance to cover President Clinton’s week with Michelle Obama.

“President Clinton alone for a week with the beautiful wife of his wife’s political opponent — what could possibly go wrong?” the spokesman said.

Sen. Clinton refused to comment on her husband’s idea. But she did take the opportunity to congratulate former New York Yankees slugger Don Mattingly, an Evansville native, on becoming the Yankees’ new manager. Informed by a reporter later that the job of managing the senator’s favorite baseball team had actually gone to former Yankees catcher Joe Girardi, Clinton said she simply “misremembered.” She added that next time she would “hit that one out of the large building with seats in it where people watch sports teams compete against each other.”