Posted on 06/05/2008 8:15:54 AM PDT by neverdem
I have detested the Clintons ever since I covered the New Hampshire primary in 1992. The man I saw was not the silver-tongued charmer who seems to have bewitched so many people.
Up close, he seemed like a red-cheeked, piggy-eyed bully with a mean streak a mile wide.
And when he lied - which he more or less did for a living - he had a hard-faced little spouse to step into the TV studios to cover up for him.
This woman put up with A LOT from Bill over the years but could always tell herself it was worth it because in the long run the experience would give her the presidency she so obviously deserved.
Advertisement Over the years I watched this gruesome drama - the Clintons using and abusing the democratic process as marital therapy - until, the morning after this year's Iowa caucuses, it finally seemed to be over.
A good friend of mine wrote an exultant article saying Barack Obama had done us the huge favour of moving America into a "post-Clinton" era.
No more would the happy couple be able to inflict themselves on us. We were free from Lanny Davis and Harold Ickes and Howard Wolfson and Hillary's ghastly brothers and all the easy money riff-raff who had benefited from Clinton's last minute pardons.
As I read it I was hit with the queasy realisation I didn't believe a word of it. My friend Congressman Steve Cohen was forced to apologise the other day for comparing the former First Lady to Glenn Close rising from the bathtub in Fatal Attraction.
It's actually been more like a movie about an unkillable swamp creature or lagoon dweller.
And the morning after the last two primaries Lanny Davis was circulating a petition in the Democratic party to attach her to the Obama ticket.
"Good grief," I found myself muttering. "Is there no end to this woman and her overweening ambition?"
Well, THAT was a dumb question and no mistake.
Her performance in New York on Tuesday night was positively flabbergasting. Having won South Dakota, she congratulated that state on having "the last word"- while Montana's results were still being counted.
She congratulated Mr Obama all right but not for having won by securing the majority of delegates.
She let it be known that she would accept the vice presidential nomination without ceasing to count herself a candidate for the Presidential one.
And she demanded - wait for it - "respect" for the 18 million people who had voted for her. In other words, unless she gets a great deal of care and feeding and pampering, 18 million Americans will have been dissed.
The nerve. The nerve is really quite something.
In Washington yesterday, at the same pro-Israel podium at which Mr Obama spoke earlier, Mrs Clinton spoke of the man who has un precedentedly won the nomination as if he was just another Senator, like her, just another friend of Israel, like her.
There was a time one might have expected a Jewish audience to be asked to applaud the choice of the first black American nominee but Mrs Clinton couldn't find it in herself to be quite that gracious.
Indeed, if any one thing has exposed the hollowness and rottenness of the Clintons it is the almost casual way they have ignored their old black friends and allies to pursue a Clintonian version of a white backlash "southern strategy". Nothing is excluded if it serves the cause of the great entitlement.
From 16 years of polemics against this dynasty, I had acquired a huge shelf of anti-Clinton books and even written one myself in an effort to get the poison out of my system. For about 10 seconds after Iowa I thought of tossing them out. But now I think I'll have to hold on to my arsenal. I shall be needing it again.
Perhaps it's a Jaws-type movie I'm trying to think of. Like a Great White Shark, Mrs Clinton will never stop her relentless predations until the very end.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair
Ping.
That’s because Gore has no charm at all. He’s an arrogant weenie with know-better-than-you attitude.
Ha! Made me laugh.
“Gore has no charm at all. “
I can hear his voice perfectly in my head. That eggs-agerated drawl!
“The Planet has a feeever! When your buy-by has a feever, you take it to thee dock-tor.”
Carolyn
We've traded the devil we knew for the devil we don't...
And yet, he's still better than a Clinton!
And Obama's campaign ran circles around Hillary's.
And he did it without her "experienced" team and all her connections.
It must tell you something. It tells me something...
That’s a pretty good summary...unfortunately.
WOW!
Freeper OldGlory and I were there, too. You’re exactly right. bttt
Good article, but I do think the Clintons are just about finished - the DLC is on its last legs and without the DLC, the Clinton have nothing to back them up other than their little circle of vultures (Carville, etc.) and their money. I said it in another thread - I don’t like Obama but I take delight in him taking over the DNC this morning - that must make Hillary furious.
Holy sh*t that is so funny!
Thanks....I'll look out for that at B & N.
Another winner is Gary Aldrich's "Unlimited Access". Like Lt. Col. Patterson, Gary was stationed at the White House during the Clinton years.
Yessirree. It was on display today with the non-news of Obama's buddy Tony Rezko convictions.
It is hard to agree with your comment on Hitchens about him sucking up to Billy Boy.
He had Clinton’s number early and was dammning him in his first term. By the time the Whitewater, Savings and Loan Scams and Sexual Harassment of an Arkansas State Employee was underway, Hitch was in full digust mode. With Monica, Hitchens wrote a book at the height of Impeachment called “No One Left to Lie To” that was a classic indictment of the Great Asprin Factory Bomber and has been has hard on Billy as on his great vendetta against Kissinger.
I think he hates them almost as much as we do!
Interestingly, if it weren’t for what we already know about HER character, she has seemed to be getting younger, more congenial, more “viable”, than her tired and jaded husband.
"The Candidacy of Dorian Gray"?
The Chicago Machine is part and parcel of the the Kennedy Crime Family.
Twin Sons of different Mutha’s.
From afar, too. His true character came through the TV waves, across the miles, in every gesture and facial expression. How did so many manage to overlook these things? The same way they now overlook Hussein Obama's atrocious circle of friends.
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