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Bill Clinton, An Embarrassment

Posted by ROBERT STEIN in Politics.
Jan 13th, 2008 | Comments

As if race and gender were not complications enough in this critical Presidential contest, we now have Bill Clinton stepping up to remind us of how devious and disruptive he can be.

For a year, he stayed dutifully in the background, but the man who can’t help being Bill Clinton is now roiling his wife’s campaign with the kind of hatchet work on her opponent that is normally done by an incumbent or aspiring Vice-President. In the process of Cheneying Barack Obama, he is outdoing Jimmy Carter in trashing the dignity expected of a former President.

Cross-posted from my blog. More here.

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DLS

Race and "gender" (sex) mean nothing to decent, normal people, who support or oppose Clinton or Obama for the same reasons they'd have opposed Jeane Kirkpatrick in the 1980s, or supported or opposed Colin Powell in the 1990s and 2000s, or supported or opposed any white male.

JSpencer

Robert, more often than not I agree with the views you express in TMV, but your Jimmy Carter link goes to an opinion I definitely take issue with. In fact, the 2 comments following the linked article do a good job of summing up my views on the matter. Few if any ex-presidents can claim the legacy of humanitarian accomplishments that Carter can, and they far outweigh any off the cuff remarks he's made about our current president, whose legacy during and after office will likely be summed up as abysmal and self-serving respectively.

cosmoetica

Can anyone get Lewinsky out of retirement to keep Slick Willy busy?

StockBoySF

JSpencer- perfect- thanks!

I'm not so sure that Clinton remains an embarrassment as the strategy is to obfuscate Hillary's weakest points and put her opponents on the defensive. By distorting the truth, Hillary's opponents have to scramble to reply. And when the opponents actually tell the truth, all the public sees is the same old "He said/she said" political game going on. It turns people off and Hillary is betting that it will minimize Obama's message of positive change (since he has to set the record straight which takes his focus off his own strategy). Personally I think it's a great strategy for Hillary, but I want to get beyond these games Billary is playing. This just supports the case that much more for Obama if you want a different tone in DC.

As far as Monica- I think we should leave her out of this- she's a bright girl (went on to LSE). She didn't cause Clinton's embarrassment. If Clinton didn't have a skirt-chaser problem, the world would be very different. Monica was just a doe-eyed intern taken in by Bill's charisma and flattery. I feel sorry for her- especially the way society has different standards for sex for men and women. It seems that people can forgive Bill- the President, the most powerful man on Earth (at the time), married with a daughter, whereas Monica, a young and single intern, has not been forgiven yet and is still seen as a tramp,

I'll remind everyone that it was the Republican Linda Tripp who started all this. When asked why she wanted to see Clinton fall, she said she wanted to see some dignity restored to the White House. Well we got Bush.

DLS

"Monica was just a doe-eyed intern taken in by Bill's charisma and flattery."

Yeah, "innocent" Monica and her jar full of condoms...

StockBoySF

DLS- Monica wanted Bill as much as he wanted her, and she knows all about the birds and the bees (and how they frolic in the tobacco fields). I'm just saying that Monica's naughtiness was nothing compared to Bill's philandering and lies. Also she didn't do it for any political gain (as far as I can tell).

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