Posted on 04/24/2007 5:13:53 AM PDT by SJackson
Conservative columnist and author R. Emmett Tyrrell has not really spent half his career reporting scandals about Bill and Hillary Clinton. It just seems that way. The American Spectator, the conservative monthly magazine he founded in 1967, broke some of the earliest stories about "Troopergate," "Travelgate," and "Filegate" in the early 1990s. And two of his books, 1997's Boy Clinton and 2003's Madam Hillary, were unflattering but best-selling biographies of his favorite Democrat power couple. Now the irrepressibly troublemaking Tyrrell has updated the Bill Clinton saga with The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House. I talked to him Thursday, April 18, by telephone from his offices in Washington. Theres a lot more you will learn. The beauty of being an independent critic of the Clintons, as I have been, is that I can actually report that much of the press knows but has never deigned to report to the American people.
Q: Why can't you just leave the poor Clintons alone?
A: Because I read the newspapers! (laughs) And they're in the newspapers -- often the headlines -- every day!
Q: What's a quick synopsis of your book?
A: The book takes up from Clinton's last hours in the White House and is the only book to chronicle his years of retirement, as he raises vast amounts of money for himself, recaptures the Democrat Party, and paves the way for his wife's coronation.
Q: Would you characterize what he's doing as work or play?
A: I characterize it as "obsession," (laughs), which is to say his life. His life, as I say in the book, has been one long itinerary.
Q: Is he still the same old Bill?
A: If that's the way you're going to phrase the question, let me answer it by saying, emphasis on "old." He's really aged. I crashed his birthday party in Toronto and saw for myself what my sources had told me during the two-and-a-half years I spent writing the book -- that Clinton had aged astoundingly. He's not in particularly good health. Why that hasn't made it into the new stories about him, I don't know.
Q: Why did you write this book?
A: Ive been fascinated with the 1960s generation, and the 1960s generation is now facing its probably great political struggle in 08. Theres the conservative side, which I have been on all these years, and theres the left-wing side, which the Clintons and Jean-Francois Kerry and Howard Dean and Al Gore have been on. Ive followed them from the beginning and Im convinced that whoever gets the Democrat nomination in 08 will be giving the left-wing of that generation its last opportunity to lay claim to the identity of the entire generation.
Q: What has Bill Clinton been doing since he left the White House and why is it different or worse than what previous ex-presidents did?
A: Well, just in dollars and cents. I start the book by comparing the retirement of Harry Truman with the retirement of Bill Clinton. The reason you compare the two is that, a) they're both Democrats, but b), they both left office with a very low approval rating. Clinton's went through the floorboards within hours of his leaving the White House because of Pardongate, the trashing of the White House and the pilfering of the White House. But Harry Truman absolutely refused, as he put it, to "commercialize the presidency." So he lived quietly -- and I might add in dignity -- reading history and writing at his retirement home in Missouri. Clinton went out and commercialized the presidency. He raised over $43 million in the first four years with, let's face it, pretty vacuous speeches.
Q: You always hear that "Clinton is a great speaker." But I've never heard him say anything great.
A: Take a look at the quote that I lift in my prologue from Toronto -- a completely meaningless if not chaotic statement. That night in Toronto the Canadian audience contributed $24 million to the Clinton charity. I quoted from the speech. It was inane. His speeches are inane. He is in retirement a reckless, mercenary and unhappy man.
Q: Have the media done a proper job of covering ex-president Clinton?
A: In the book, I coin a phrase the episodic apologists. They dominate the media. They have gone through repeated episodes in the Clinton life of holding great hope for his arrival; being thrown into great indignation - personal indignation - at the scandal; and then hope renewed in a matter of months. You never saw it any more dramatically than after Pardongate. They had such hopes for him in retirement. And within hours he had committed the greatest pardon scandal in American political history.
Read Pardongate in the book, where I quote Democratic leaders and the New York Times and the New York Observer abominating the Clintons and, in the case of the Observer, calling on Hillary to resign from the Senate. And within a matter of months, The Washington Post, which was just as critical, is booming her as the next president of the United States.
These are the episodic apologists. Ill tell you there is something deep-rooted in all of this. There is a deep-rooted reason that the Clintons have been accompanied through their scandalous lives by the episodic apologists. And the reason is? The 1960s generation. There has never been a generation like it - the lefts narcissism, amorality and endless political hustle. These journalists who are episodic apologists and the politicians who are episodic apologists are from that generation.
Q: What new and interesting will aficionados of Bill Clintons personal life learn from your book?
A: Theyll learn that his retirement has been a period of emotional turmoil and rejection, first by the American people and his wife, who sent him off traveling the world to raise money on his speaking tours. You learn interesting things like the Secret Service has no respect for him, and in fact served as my sources in numerous occasions. Youll learn that after telling journalists it was a great mistake for him to give international fugitive Marc Rich a pardon, he actually months later in Switzerland visited with Marc Rich. Youll learn that in the spring of 05 he had his political people approach the political advisers of Gov. Schwarzenegger with the proposal that if Schwarzenegger will support Clinton in eliminating the ban against a president running for a third term, his people would support Schwarzenegger in overthrowing the constitutional ban against foreign-born presidential candidates.
Q: You are said to know more about the Clintons, and also more about the dark side of the Clintons, than any other writer. What's the scariest thing you know?
A: I don't know that I know much more than a lot of journalists, I just will report it. They just won't report it.
Q: Is the stuff in your book or is it waiting for future books?
A: Bill Clinton is an adolescent -- a perpetual adolescent. Taking all the pathologies of a bad boy and then bringing those pathologies of a bad boy into the presidency leads to some very dangerous consequences. One was his neglect of terrorism for eight years. Two was the technology transfers he allowed to the Red Chinese. And I guess three was defining deviancy down. I don't know what his greatest danger is to the country, but those are three.
Q: You obviously have fundamental political differences with the Clintons
A: I dont know! Clinton claims to be a moderate!
Q: How can we trust what you tell us about him?
A: Well, look at what Ive actually said about him and see if it measures up. Theres never been any revelation Ive made about Bill Clinton that has ever been found to be wrong. And make sure, that when someone tells you there is, you make sure it was a revelation of mine. The Clintons are inveterate liars and inveterate campaigners, and theyll go out there and campaign and say that Ive said shocking things about Bill Clinton. In his book (former Democratic National Committee Chairman) Terry McAuliffe claims that The American Spectator cooked up the nonsense that Clinton had ordered the murder of political opponents. He actually said in the book that that was one of our revelations. There is no truth to that whatsoever. So when somebody tells you that one of my revelations wasnt true, make sure it was one of my revelations and not one of their pipe dreams.
Q: What good or nice things will historians say about Mr. Clintons eight years in office?
A: ... Historians are now saying that he achieved very little. I cite James Patterson, an eminent historian writing in the Oxford series of American history. He said that Clinton achieved very little. I suppose thats what theyll end up saying - thats the good thing: he achieved so little.
Q: The number of pardons and commutations -- was the number normal and was the nature of the crimes that were absolved typical?
A: The number was rather high but not catastrophically high. The crimes were very serious crimes -- a lot of drug dealing, money-laundering, violent crime. But what made them reprehensible was that they rarely lived up to the minimum of standards of a criminal who had spent some time in prison, had sought to make restitution, and had apologized. The Marc Rich case is a perfect example of it. In some cases, some of them never even sought pardons. In the case of Marc Rich, he had never done any time, he had never cooperated with authorities, and he had never apologized or attempted restitution.
Q: Is Bill Clinton a net plus or a net minus to Hillary Clinton's hopes in 2008?
A: I can't say if he is a net plus or a net minus. I can just tell you what his pluses are. His pluses are that he can raise a great deal of money. His minuses are three:
When he appears on stage with her, the attention shifts to him. The Clintons are constantly living in fear that there will be a bimbo eruption at any moment, because of the reckless way he's lived his years of retirement. Finally, the record is clear: When he campaigns for people, they almost always lose. In '04 he campaigned for something like 14 candidates -- 12 of them lost. It's in the book. So there's an awful lot of myth about what a great campaigner he is. He's great for Bill Clinton but he's rarely been great for anyone he's campaigned for.
Q: What does it say about this country that so many people -- including so many rich and famous people -- think Bill Clinton was a great and wonderful president?
A: Well, it says, as Will Rogers would have said -- of himself -- "A great many Americans only know what they read in the newspapers."
Sen. Clinton's family charity not disclosed: paper
Just the tip of the iceberg.
Note to the 'Rats: You can't say you weren't warned...
Fearing a bimbo eruption? Are they discounting Belinda Stronach? I know she is a foreign person, but I think she still counts! Remember, she is the one who, with approximately 6 months of experience in parliament, wanted to run for the leadership of the Liberal party. So she certainly is in his league.
How typical and how pathetic, that the liberals are stuck with the Clintons as their role models of the past and best hope for the future.
ping
The Presidency of the U.S. does not require the person most fit to fill the office and carry out the duties but instead requires the person most necessary at the time.
The Liberals now as always want to carry, lock stock and baggage, all the old ideology and dated political arguments into the WH with them. Liberal candidates forever bank on the credulity or maybe, the political backwardness of their constituents to accept them in that mien and to hand them the government of the country based on a tacit agreement between Liberal voters and Liberal candidates, that the political environment from one administration to another is static.
The political environment, now especially, is NOT static and some more sophisticated political expression ought to be forthcoming fro Liberal leaders. It is NOT! But the MSM perpetuates the myth that it is and that the Liberal leaders are not backward in their views and policies but actually are the backbone of populist integrity in the U.S.
The whole Liberal posture is an absolute disservice to that group of American voters who, for whatever perfectly justifiable reason, cannot agree with the Conservative mentality in the U.S. Liberals need better representation and Conservatism needs a more worthy political opposition, to keep it honest.
LOL "Politically backward" is putting it kindly to describe the kind of voter who would give a third term to a pitiful, broken-down old lecher who, in his heart of hearts, will always remain a hippie.
Interesting article bump.
Evita and her ‘husband’ are frozen in 1967
....He’s not in particularly good health....
My favorite part. He will not last her four years.
But hopefully the campaign season. There could be no worse scenerio than the image of the poor widow standing in the rotunda, vowing to complete her dear husband's dream.
I agree with you .. but I wouldn’t call them “politically backward” .. I call them politically IGNORANT!
They’ve been listening to CNN and CBS for too many years and the truth never touches their ears.
Thanks for the heads up.
“I’m convinced that whoever gets the Democrat nomination in ‘08 will be
giving the left-wing of that generation its last opportunity to lay claim to
the identity of the entire generation.”
AND THEY MUST, MUST, MUST BE DEFEATED IN THIS NEXT ELECTION!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t like Guliani and hope that someone (Fred Thompson) is the nominee
but I WILL vote REPUB!
I truly fear that the Guliani haters will throw this next election into the
hands of the Demrats therefore jeopardizing the war on terror and our
country (and the worlds future).
You're welcome. Thought you'd like to know.
OMG, don't give her any ideas.
You overestimate the influence of the haters, which have always been there.
One can never give her an idea for which she does not already have a complete plan.
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