Analysis: Bill Clinton's Lost Legacy

CBS News ^ | Jan. 26, 2008 | Vaughn Ververs

[Eric in the Ozarks]

It was explained as a sort of Bill’s “pre alimony” service to repay Hillary...

[Eric in the Ozarks]

It was explained as a sort of Bill’s “pre alimony” service to repay Hillary...

[Farnham]

“For the life of me I can’t understand how he’s helped her in the long run?”

Dick Morris says the Clintons planned to lose, then use a whisper campaign to claim it was because of the huge black vote in SC. The problem is that they lost so big. Obama took 35% of Pickens County - which is 91% white. We’ll have to wait & see if the strategy works.

[crazydad]

And the victims are willing participants this time.

[sirchtruth]

After watching the MTP round table w/Russert, it looks like the Clinton loving sycofants are finally turning on them and running into Obamas arms.

I would venture to guess Obama wins this thing and goes on to win the Presidency. There's no way a rino is going to win. The conservatives, blue dog dems, independents, and fence sitters are not going to vote for another Bush moderate.

[bvw]

To me, I read the outlook for William Blythe Jefferson Clinton as well, violently criminal. What do sociopaths do when they no longer get their way?

[Bernard]

Not is she doesn't get 80% of the black vote. The dislike for the Clintons has become personal with blacks. If she's the nominee, Dems will have a hard time getting 50% of the black vote.

If the Republicans offer more of the same, these voters could vote for Hillary anyway, out of habit. No, the Republican candidate would have to offer a reason for blacks to vote for him, not just not vote for Hillary.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“Clinton’s legacy as a lying, cheating, perjuring, subborning of perjury, rapist-in-chief is secure and everylasting!”

Well said! And nice to “see” you. :)

[MomwithHope]

I’m almost believing Bill has deliberately sabotaged her campaign while appearing to help her as per their agreement. I don’t think he really wants to be First Lady. His personal life will be under too much scrutiny and he will be limited in his money making speech business. Their income would be under a microscope. She expected to lose SC but not so badly and her chances of regaining black votes seems slim. She could never win a national election without the black vote. So she is really in a pickle. Too bad.

[Catphish]

They said the same thing after the obscene pardon scandal which barely gets a mention these days and really should disqualify any Clinton from running for anything except dog catcher. After Hillary gets the nomination and picks Obama as a running mate all will be forgiven.

[Ron in Acreage]

Anyone but Hillary as far as i’m concerned. If it’s Obama, then so be it.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Those two have one of the sickest, most co-dependent, pathological relationships I’ve ever seen.

There is no doubt in my military mind that he is sabotaging her, all the while pretending to “help” her. No doubt whatsoever. And she continues to take it!

‘Smartest woman in the world,’ my Aunt Fanny!

[The Electrician]

The man crowned as America's first black president for his unprecedented personal connection to the African-American community has abdicated the throne.

What a foolish statement - there was no 'throne' to abdicate - rather, he has always been a con artist, and anybody who believed in the "first black president" nonsense was just another sucker taken in by just another Clinton con job.

It must be hard for all those 'journalist' suckers to admit that they've been had, or that the black celebrity who started the whole mess by defending Clinton's actions in Monicagate was either a dupe or a paid shill - probably because they are afraid to criticize (leftist) blacks for fear of being called 'racists'. So rather than pointing out that Toni Morrison was a fool to coin the phrase in the first place, they go along with it as if it were true, and then they lay the blame squarely on Clinton for abdicating the throne.

[Inspectorette]

Whenever I see this particular pic of the Sinkmeister, I immediately think he’s in an orange prison jumpsuit, handcuffed, finally being hauled away to prison.

[Puppage]

The man crowned as America's first black president for his unprecedented personal connection to the African-American community

1) America's first black president

If I were black, that statement would piss me off

2) his unprecedented personal connection to the African-American community

If he was was SO WELL connected, why didn't he promote any blacks to high positions in his cabinet?

[OESY]

Bill you can't quit campaigning for Hillary now. Remember, this is your reelection, your redemption, your legacy—a time to reverse all those bad things that people said and did to you. With JFK’s encouragement, you sought high political office because it makes you a babe magnet. Too bad you married impulsively and prematurely, but that’s history. Old Willard led you down the wrong path, and now you’re stuck.

But, look at the brighter side, you’ve got your “open marriage” arrangement with her—so there’s nothing else to do but stay out there in the public eye. You need to be seen, to be engaged, to present yourself front and center. (Sorry about the military analogy, but this is WAR.) No one can tell an ex-president how to behave. Where’s your self-esteem, man? You owe it to Willard.

Remember one other piece of advice: If she doesn’t win, it is because you f*cked up, sat on your duff, didn’t do squat for her, said the wrong thing, put your foot in your mouth, came off as too aggressive or, alternatively, dumber than shinola, and you will hear about it for an eternity. (Hint: Read the note on the lamp as it sails by.) She won’t be busy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or traveling around the world. She’ll have oodles of time to teach you a few lessons. So get out there and fight! Obama deserves to go down! And you’re just the guy to do it. We’re counting on you. Besides, your Willard wants company.

.

[ReleaseTheHounds]

Back at you, Diana!

[Iron Munro]

The Real Clinton Legacy Remains....

[COUNTrecount]

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg062504.asp
Paul Greenberg
The History of Slick Willie — from the coiner of the moniker
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | The e-mails have been clogging the system, the phone calls have started, Fox News called . ... It’s just like the old days, aka the Clinton Years.

Yep, Slick Willie is back, not that he was ever completely gone. But this time he’s been resurrected by his alter ego, Bill Clinton. While pushing his memoir on “60 Minutes,” Arkansas’ prodigal son mentioned that, of all the nicknames he’s acquired, he likes Slick Willie the least.

I swelled with pride. And sighed at the prospect of having to write still another column on the history of Slick Willie, going into his life and times, his birth and ... apparent immortality.

Just when you think Slick Willie belongs to history, he pops up on “60 Minutes.” He’s like some Golem you’ve invoked for what seemed perfectly good reasons at the time, but who then refuses to go away when his time is over. Kind of like Bill Clinton himself.

This time Slick Willie has drawn fire from Bill Clinton himself, who says there’s “a very good reason” he dislikes the name: “No one could fairly look at my political life and say I didn’t believe in anything.”

Really? And just what political belief wouldn’t he modify if his popularity depended on it? He didn’t specify. He seldom does. It wouldn’t be Clintonesque (another term he inspired) to be specific. If there was a single constant to which he adhered throughout his political career, it was probably triangulation.

Bill Clinton may be confusing the term Slick Willie with Empty Suit. Both might apply in his case, but in addition to equivocation - at which he remains the master - the term Slick Willie implies duplicity. Which is why I used it to describe his political persona.

Back in 1996, a book publisher talked me into putting out a collection of my Clinton editorials and columns over the years. I went though roll after roll of microfilm at the Pine Bluff, Ark., public library to see when I’d first used the term Slick Willie. It turned out to be September 27, 1980. It was in an editorial for the Pine Bluff Commercial that had been inspired by the two-faced attack he made on his gubernatorial opponent that year, Frank White.

On the one hand, Bill Clinton was trying to place himself in the honored tradition of Arkansas’ post-Faubus reform governors when he spoke at his party’s state convention that year - even though he had embraced Orval Faubus himself, literally, at the outset of his first term.

He would also criticize Frank White, quite rightly, for demagoguing the issue of how to handle the Cuban refugees who’d arrived in Arkansas that summer. Then-Gov. Clinton welcomed the refugees at first, but by September of that year he was badmouthing Jimmy Carter for sending the Cubans to Fort Chaffee. In the dishonorable tradition of Orval Faubus, he threatened to defy the whole United States Army if Washington sent any more our way. It was all pretty slick. Hence the sobriquet Slick Willie.

It caught on. Because politicians aren’t just given nicknames. They earn them. At some point, a nickname engages the public imagination with an almost audible click - Old Hickory, The Rail Splitter, Tricky Dick, The Great Communicator ... and, of course, Slick Willie.

Slick Willie had a long incubation period. As early as 1979, I was still trying out nicknames for the state’s new governor. Most played on his youth - Kid Clinton, Boy Governor, Young Smoothie - for he was the youngest governor in the Union at the time. But nothing clicked till Slick Willie, and it would go national when Bill Clinton did in 1992.

By now I’ve seen myself credited with coining the nickname Slick Willie so often that I expect it will be noted on my tombstone. (I should have known that Devoted Husband and Father was too much to hope for.) Databases generations hence will doubtless contain the entry, “Slick Willie - Nickname given 42nd pres. of U.S. by obscure Ark. newspaper editor.”

But history is never simple, and neither is the history of Slick Willie. So I hasten to add that a letter writer to the old Arkansas Democrat -Mr. J.L. Crosser of Calico Rock, Ark. - used the phrase some time earlier in 1980. And wasn’t there also a bar-and-grill, maybe combined with a pool hall, named Slick Willy’s around at the same time?

All I know is that, almost a quarter of a century ago, deep in darkest Arkansas at Pine Bluff, I was blissfully oblivious to all these other Slick Willies. I was having too much fun dreaming up nicknames for our boy governor, scarcely suspecting that one day he would become our boy president.

So who really created Slick Willie? That’s easy: Bill Clinton.

[ReleaseTheHounds]

Yes... there you go... you’ve captured the TRUE legacy of Bill Clinton — the very worst remnant of the Clinton years. Ah, the Bridge to the 21st Century... constructed with the cans kicked down the road by Slick Willie and the Hildabeast. Imagine the pardons the Slickster would have handed out had he been in office following 9-11...