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History Will Not be Kind to Clinton (annotated)
- By Charles Krauthammer
Townhall.com | June 29, 2004
Since 1960 we have had only two politically successful presidents -- reaffirmed and re-elected, dominating their decades: Reagan and Clinton. (Except for Kennedy, whose presidency was cut short, the others -- Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush [41] -- were repudiated.) Clinton's autobiography, appearing as it does in such close conjunction to the national remembrance of Reagan, invites the inevitable comparison.
- ASIDE:Clearly someone should notify America's founders that they have erred... men are not deserving of self-goverment, because clearly self-government is nothing more than the aggregation of all our psychic traumas and libidinal confusions.. and look where that has gotten us...one Clinton leaving the white house and one aiming for the US Senate for the State of New York... perhaps the liberals ARE onto something?
- But no, study the last two Clinton elections carefully... this most shameless and shameful American President is the product of plurality, votes obtained through the gile and intrigue of an elitist cabal of intellectually impaired and ethically corrupt media manipulators aligned in effect with the electoral tampering of one man, H. Ross Perot, who although he occasionally gave a good speech was still intelligent enough to know his only role was to twice deny the conservative majority of American voters a first choice for President.
- And now even as Evita determinedly grasps for the Security Power and Influence of the Senate seat, one sees in her early campaigning the overriding awareness that her only hope is the sowing of confusion and ignorance... the demonization of a long time public servant whose accomplishments are towering, the pandering to the lowest and most depraved and corrupt antisocial organizations and figures (no not the mob, the teachers unions and Mr. Sharpton).
- Arm in arm this body of liberal enthusiasts march forth to assure that America continues to be contaminated and disabled by their control of government into the 21st century... Arrogantly and in complete disregard of truth, rationality, or the notion of liberty... they pound at the very gates of freedom, threatening to burn (redefine to mean the opposite of what they say) the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address and replace them with their own Orwellian Banners of "community" "children" "education" "fairness" and all the other focus-group-tested liberal-illogicisms. But the translation exists, and when the alien identifying sunglasses are donned, all of their slogans can be seen to read, "Be Liberal, Live in Ignorance and Servitude."
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"Be Liberal, Live in Ignorance and Servitude"
by Gail Wynand
COMPLETE ARTICLE
The contrast is obvious. Reagan was the hedgehog who knew -- and did -- a few very large things: fighting and winning the Cold War, reviving the economy and beginning a fundamental restructuring of the welfare state.
Clinton was the fox. He knew -- and accomplished -- small things. His autobiography is a perfect reflection of that: a wild mish-mash of remembrance, anecdote, appointment calendar and political payback. The themeless pudding of a million small things is just what you would expect from a president who once gave a Saturday radio address on school uniforms.
Small, but not always unimportant. Clinton did conclude NAFTA and did sign welfare reform. His greatest achievement was an act of brilliant passivity -- he got out of the way of one of the largest peacetime economic expansions in American history. And though he takes personal credit for all the jobs created -- a ridiculous assertion to make about the decade of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates -- he does deserve credit for not screwing things up. Presidents often do. He easily could have.
- ASIDE: If leftist pandering keeps the disenfranchized down in perpetuity, clinton pandering,("it's the economy, stupid"), kept the middle and upper classes wilfully ignorant for eight years.
- And ironically, both results (leftist social policy and the clinton economy) are equally illusory, fraudulent. It is becoming increasingly clear that clinton covertly cooked the books even as he assiduously avoided essential actions that would have negatively impacted the economy--the ultimate source of his continued power--actions like, say, going after the terrorists.
HILLARY IS NIXON-PLUS part 2
BEWARE THE SYNERGY
Nixonian paranoia and fascistic mindset combine with
clintonian megalomania, ineptitude and, most important, easy betrayal of America
to make hillary clinton deadly dangerous for us all.
Mia T, 7.09.05
His great failing was foreign policy. Viewing the world through the narrow legalist lens of liberal internationalism, he spent most of his presidency drafting and signing treaty after useless treaty on such things as biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. All this in a world where the biggest problem comes from terrorists and rogue states for whom treaties are meaningless.
Like the 1920s, the '90s were a golden age permeated by a postwar euphoria of apparently endless peace and prosperity. Both decades ended abruptly, undermined ultimately by threats that were ignored as they grew and burrowed underground. Clinton let a decade of unprecedented American prosperity and power go without doing anything about al-Qaeda, Afghanistan or Iraq (where his weakness allowed France and Russia to almost totally undermine the post-Gulf War sanctions). And although al-Qaeda declared war on America in 1996 and, as we now know, hatched the September 11 plot that same year, it continued to flourish throughout the decade.
Looking the other way was largely a function of the age -- our holiday from history, our retreat from seriousness, our Seinfeld decade of obsessive ordinariness. Clinton never could have been elected during the Cold War. In the 1990s, history produced the president perfectly suited to the time -- a time of domesticity, triviality and self-absorption.
- ASIDE: The clinton Nano-President never could have been elected during the Cold War, and must not be elected during the War on Terror. But as the Nano-Presidency, itself, demonstrates, there is never a 'safe time' to put a clinton in a position of power. -- Mia T
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Its essence is captured perfectly, and inadvertently, in one sentence, Clinton's own account of his response to al-Qaeda's most spectacular and murderous pre-Sept. 11 outrage: the African embassy bombings of Aug. 7, 1998. Ten days afterward, Clinton made his televised confession of having lied to the nation for seven months about the Monica affair. He then retired to a chilly vacation on Martha's Vineyard with wife and daughter. Two days later, he emerged by helicopter on the White House lawn, gave a snappy salute, and marched into the Oval Office to announce the bombing of an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and a chemical factory in Sudan.
Clinton writes: "I spent the first couple of days (after the national television confession) alternating between begging for forgiveness (from Hillary) and planning the strikes on al-Qaeda.''
Or as he told Oprah just this week, "I'm bombing Osama bin Laden's training camp and sleeping on the couch. It was a strange time.''
That produced a strange man. His associates called this compartmentalization. I call it trivialization.
- ASIDE: Hear the clintons discuss this. -- Mia T
One is inevitably reminded of the quite unbelievable image of the president of the United States on the phone with a congressman discussing Bosnia while being simultaneously serviced by Monica Lewinsky.
- ASIDE: While clinton was being serviced by The Intern, he and Congressman H.L. "Sonny" Callahan were discussing sending American troops -- our sons and daughters -- to a dangerous place full of death. -- Mia T
What was always staggering to me about this scene was not what it says about Clinton's sexual practices -- I couldn't care less one way or another -- but about his unseriousness.
- ASIDE: This scene confirms more than simply clinton's smallness; it confirms the Africa clip, the clintons' easy disregard for any life not their own... which, in turn, explains THE CLINTONS' EASY DISREGARD FOR GENOCIDE AND TERRORISM.--Mia T
I never hated Clinton. On the contrary, I often expressed admiration for his charm and for the roguish cynicism that allowed him to navigate so many crises. Nor was I scandalized by his escapades. What appalled me then, a feeling that returns as Clinton has gone national revisiting his own presidency, is the smallness of a man who granted equal valence to his own indulgences on the one hand and to the fate of nations on the other. It is the smallness that disturbs. It is that smallness that history will remember.
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JENNINGS (Discussing 
