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Posted on 10/06/2003 4:27:05 PM PDT by mikeb704
It was bound to happen. The only surprise was the ferocity with which Arnold Schwarzenegger was attacked, particularly by the Los Angeles Times, in the closing days of his bid to become California’s governor.
The Hitler smear was fun, but didn’t stick. The other stuff did, mainly because there was a solid basis to it.
Perhaps it would have been less confusing to just start publishing the names of women who didn’t claim to have been groped. It appears Arnold carried that infamous rowdy movie set atmosphere around with him everywhere he’s been for decades.
I feel sorry for his wife. A Kennedy woman, she undoubtedly knows more than she wants to about men behaving badly. Even her extensive background in such matters, though, couldn’t have prepared her for the sheer scope of her husband’s boorish conduct.
I’m even beginning to feel a little sorry for Arnold. Readers might recall that a few weeks ago I wrote critically about him and Wesley Clark, two guys who give the term "empty suit" new meaning. For both of them, being elected to high public office is something they think they deserve right now. They’ll come up with ideas later.
The nadir of Schwarzenegger’s existence, however, must be that some people are now comparing him to Bill Clinton. Oh, the shame of it all. Let’s keep in mind that there are some differences.
Arnold isn’t the president of the United States. He didn’t lie under oath. He’s not been accused of rape. He hasn’t been fined $90,000 for obstructing justice. He’s not paid $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit.
Klintoon Kool-Aid drinkers have identified yet another distinction. Codepink is a Leftist women’s group that’s primarily involved with "waging peace," but has broadened its interests recently. A Codepink activist claims the real difference between Schwarzenegger and Bill is "that Clinton was so brilliant."
She went on to say: "If Arnold was a brilliant pol and had this thing about inappropriate behavior, we'd figure a way of getting around it." Which serves as an indicator of how genuinely outraged these gals are at men treating women solely as sex objects.
Their biggest beef is most likely that they’re not getting groped. Yes, if only Arnold would wage peace with them, thus demonstrating how brilliant he is, they surely could figure a way around it all.
I saw California’s incumbent governor, the one so many citizens want out of office, pontificating on TV this morning about Arnold’s unseemly activities. Standing right behind him was Jesse "Who’s Your Daddy?" Jackson. Did none of his handlers see the underlying hilarity of such a show?
Democrats have many years of experience in last-minute attacks. Just a few days before the 2000 presidential election, out popped a story about George W. Bush’s arrest for drunk driving 24 years earlier.
Nine years ago in California, the Republican U. S. Senate candidate narrowly lost when it was disclosed, less than a week before the election, that he’d once hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny.
Two years earlier in California, another Republican Senate candidate lost a close election when it was disclosed, again less than a week before the election, that he and his girlfriend and another couple had once visited a strip club.
Contrast those events with what happened less than a month before the 1964 presidential election. President Johnson’s closest personal advisor, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in the men’s room of a Washington YMCA for what was termed in those innocent days as disorderly conduct. It turned out that this wasn’t Mr. Jenkins’ first brush with the law. On a previous arrest, he’d been charged with being a "pervert."
Republican Barry Goldwater had been slamming Democrats in general and Johnson in particular with charges of moral decay. But, as recounted in Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President 1964, Barry chose not to exploit it, not to amplify the incident with end-of-the-campaign accusations:
"Yet the Goldwater painted as a killer by the Democrats could not bring himself to hurt an individual; urged by his young men to hammer the issue, to make the most of it, as if a gift had been given him – he simply refused. He referred to the episode in the weeks following only rarely – and with conspicuous lack of relish."
Unlike the gentlemanly Goldwater, most Democrats play dirty politics. Even the Terminator’s figured that out by now.
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