The Clintons to revisit Oval Office today, separately

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Bill Clinton will be in the Oval Office today.

So will Hillary Clinton.

But not together.

The former president will meet with President Obama after lunch in the Oval Office. The secretary of State and former first lady, who was the front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination until Obama stepped into the primary a couple of winters back, will meet with the president in the Oval Office at midafternoon.

This got us to thinking today of something that Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic congressman from Indiana who served as vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, told us at breakfast -- (not exactly an intimate table, it was the Christian Science Monitor’s breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausage, aka ‘the cholesterol club’). Every politician confronts people presenting problems that cannot possibly be fixed, Hamilton advised us. But the politician never says, ‘I cannot help you.’’ Instead it’s: ‘I’m on your side.’’ Or, he suggested, in the case of one well-known pol, ‘I feel your pain.’’

More in The Swamp.

-- Mark Silva