Two For the Money, Three for the Show?

Like many of my friends, I have never understood why anyone would support or believe anything that Bill or Hillary Clinton said about anything. I can remember watching them discussing Bill’s escapades on 60 Minutes during the first Clinton campaign in 1992 and thinking, “they are such liars”. From that moment on, whenever either one of them appeared on TV I tuned them out or tuned them off.

It’s taken a long time for others to appreciate their dishonesty, their narcissism and even, perhaps, their sociopathic character disorders, but the rest of the country finally seems to be catching on. Why would 35 years of taking it to be in Bill’s shadow and destroying many women’s lives qualify Hillary for president?

Supposedly, Nixon once said, to rally his base, “watch what we do, not what we say”. The Clintons transpose this into, “listen to what we say, don’t watch what we do”.

Are the Dems out of love with Hill and Bill?
By James Lewis, January 25, 2008, American Thinker (Excerpt)


“The Left's romance with the Clintons never made any sense to conservatives, who despaired to see how low the country had fallen after eight solid years of blatant sleaze, mendacity and incompetence. "Where is the outrage?" asked Bob Dole in 1996; but then he was a badly wounded vet from World War II, and never, ever talked about his paralyzed right arm. A man from a different generation.

Millions of sane voters wondered where the outrage was, too, but the Clintons kept their media phalanx intact. They were untouchable. The Left just seemed to stayed suckered, in spite of everything.

Well, love is dead today. Democrats are making goo-goo eyes at a younger and better-looking idol. Even David Broder drops a tear listening to Obama.

What's more, the Left finally sees the Clintons for what they are. It only took sixteen years to figure out what everybody else knew in 1991. The mind boggles.

Two months ago Maureen Dowd, of all people, wrote in the NYT that

"Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar ... Of course, Hillary is never on her own. From the beginning, her campaign has relied on her husband's donors, network, strategies and strong-arming."

This week she dumped another stink bomb:

"Bill's transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless - and seamy."

Wow! Why wasn't Dowd giving us these devastating insights in time for the elections of 1992, 1996 and 2000? Oh, never mind. I can guess.

Even Margaret Carlson, totally in the pitch-black burqa for the Clintons all these years, has just had it. She now raises the spectre of more Monicas to come:

"Months ago, a voter explained why he was leaning against Senator Hillary Clinton for president: ``You can't be commander-in-chief,'' he said, ``if you can't keep your dog on the porch.''

"He was referring to the specter of another Monica emerging during the Democratic primaries, and this time Hillary being unable to blame a ``vast right-wing conspiracy'' or retreat to Martha's Vineyard behind a pair of dark glasses."

The hard ideological Left has had it with the Clintons, too. The Nation quotes Norah Ephron's devolution from pure Clintonism to disillusionment:

"I love [Hillary Clinton] so completely that, honestly, she would have to burn down the White House before I would say anything bad about her!" exclaimed Nora Ephron in a 1993 Newsday interview.

Three years later, she told the Wellesley class of 1996,

"Understand: Every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you."

Come late 2006, however, Ephron was the one on the attack as one of the self-described "Hillary resisters --- those who believe that she will do anything to win ... who can't stand her position on the war, who don't trust her as far as you can spit."”

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Clinton's Depressing Assault on Obama
By E. J. Dionne, January 25, 2008 RealClearPolitics (Excerpt)

WASHINGTON – “It was a remarkable moment: A young, free-thinking presidential hopeful named Bill Clinton sat down with reporters and editors at The Washington Post in October 1991 and started saying things most Democrats wouldn't allow to pass their lips.

Ronald Reagan, Clinton said, deserved credit for winning the Cold War. He praised Reagan's "rhetoric in defense of freedom" and his role in "advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back."

"The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing," Clinton declared.

Clinton was careful to add that the Reagan military program included "a lot of wasted money and unnecessary expenditure," but the signal had been sent: Clinton was willing to move beyond "the brain-dead politics in both parties," as he so often put it.

His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton two days later for daring to "set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan."

Clinton's "readiness to defy his party's prevailing Reaganphobia and admit it," the paper wrote, "is one reason he's a candidate to watch."

I have been thinking about that episode ever since Hillary Clinton's campaign started unloading on Barack Obama for making statements about Reagan that were, if anything, more measured than Bill Clinton's 1991 comments. Obama simply acknowledged Reagan's long-term impact on politics, and the fact that conservatives once constituted the camp producing new ideas, flawed though they were.

Obama's not particularly original insight was a central premise of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Clinton argued over and over that Democrats could not win without new ideas of their own. To reread Clinton's "New Covenant" speeches from back then is to be reminded of how electrifying it was to hear a politician who was willing to break new ground.

That's why the Clintons' assault on Obama is so depressing. In many ways, Obama is running the 2008 version of the 1992 Clinton campaign. You have the feeling that if Bill Clinton did not have another candidate in this contest, he'd be advising Obama and cheering him on.”