Posted on 06/05/2008 8:41:41 AM PDT by TheBlueMax
A Big Dog in Winter
By Rich Lowry New York Post | 6/5/2008
FEW things are sadder than former greats past their prime: a bloated Elvis Presley in a sequined suit; a diminished Michael Jordan making one last comeback with the Washington Wizards. And now a gaunt Bill Clinton desperately plugging his wife's doomed presidential campaign- the Big Dog in winter. With his media enablers gone, with his most faithful constituency (African-Americans) lured away by another, with the prospect of again attaining the commanding heights of American politics lost, with his magic touch in abeyance, Bill Clinton has been whittled down to a long, self-pitying plaint.
For a man blessed with so much talent, fame and riches, Clinton has always had an unparalleled ability to see himself as beset by cosmic unfairness. In his telling, the 2008 Democratic primaries are the fruit of another vast conspiracy against the Clintons, who have struggled against a biased media, cheating unions, unfair rules and malevolent left-wing pressure groups.
There's some truth in this. But, given all the advantages the Clinton machine brought into the primary season against the tyro Illinois senator, Bill Clinton is in a poor position to whine, except he doesn't have the willpower or grace to resist it.
The usual audience for his excuse-making isn't listening. Witness the scathing Vanity Fair profile of the post-presidential Clinton by former New York Times White House correspondent Todd Purdum. It once was "easy enough to retain an enduring affection" for Clinton, he writes, despite "his indiscipline" and "shortcomings." No more.
What changed? Clinton has been campaigning against the great, young liberal hope that he himself represented back in 1992. Now that he's on the wrong side of history, liberals can see all the shortcomings they formerly looked past because Clinton had all the right (in every sense) enemies.
Purdum writes of Bill Clinton's money-grubbing, dubious associations, eyebrow-raising connections to women and spectacularly sophistical self-justification as if they are some kind of departure. Was he not paying attention during Clinton's 12 years as Arkansas governor and eight years as president? The exact circumstances may have changed - Clinton used to raise funny money for his campaign coffers rather than vacuum it into his bank account and foundation - but poor character and judgment are enduring.
Clinton's office released a wounded memo responding to Purdum, complaining (among other things) that the journalist didn't talk to "two Nobel Prize winners who have praised the president's foundation." Please. These Nobel Prize winners aren't hanging out with Clinton late at night and paying him millions. Purdum focuses on Clinton wingmen like the good-time billionaire mogul Ron Burkle, who paid Clinton more than $15 million from 2003 to 2007 for advice and rainmaking.
African-Americans have bailed on Clinton just like elite journalists. Clinton had a special bond with blacks, which he used as a moral bludgeon. He couched his fight against impeachment as almost a civil-rights struggle, with the Congressional Black Caucus dutifully playing along. Noting Clinton's hardball tactics against Barack Obama, Rep. James Clyburn said, "I think black folks feel strongly that this is a strange way for President Clinton to show his appreciation." As if Clinton were ever moved by anything deeper than an instinct for self-preservation.
Bill Clinton has always been a man threatened to be swallowed by the yawning maw of his own ego. Even as he's tirelessly stumped the country on his wife's behalf, he's given the impression that it's all about him. His rage at the process - his temper tantrums at reporters and twisted attempts to make himself always the victim - speaks to an aggrieved sense of entitlement, that for all his good fortune he's owed even more.
That abiding sense will ensure his post-presidential career continues to be a restless, cringe-making affair. When he comes around to supporting Obama, who can doubt that he'll compare the candidate to himself, in the highest of all possible praise?
The Emperor and the Emperoress have no clothes and it’s not
a pretty sight!
I reject such an inference that Clinton was once great. Greatness is not built on that which is diabolical or that which is criminal. Bill Clinton was notorious and he was infamous. But notoriety and infamy should never be confused with greatness.
“I love the Elvis comparison!”
I don’t. I hate to see the King compared to a slug like Clinton. No matter how low he sank, Elvis never reached Clinton’s level of indignity.
“Turn out the liiiiiites... the partys ooooveeerrrrr!”
He may have been “great” in the eyes of the MSM but with no one else.
Bill Clinton has been whittled down to a long, self-pitying plaint. BAWA...
Cosmic Justice sure beats Social Justice every day!
Come from licking privates too often.
I’ll take my schadenfreude on the rocks, please!
Bill Clinton the Fat Elvis of Politics. It does have a ring to it!
The same could be said for the entire MSM and all of the Hillary supporters.
That is precisely what he feels entitled to - it's ground he claimed for his own. Liberals feel that way about the "moral high ground" as well - they believe in truth, freedom, etc, ad nauseum and hence no one else has a claim to them and anyone who differs with them must perforce be standing for the opposite. It is a silly, adolescent, narcissistic approach to public life.
Having been burned not for eight years but essentially the last sixteen by this tendency of the MSM to advance, protect, and defend their chosen sensation of the moment, one can scarcely work up much sympathy at its principal beneficiary being burned at last by its fickleness. One reason for his friendship with Bush senior is that he is slowly coming to a full realization of the descending half of the arc of a political career. It hurts, and the more that career was a function of pure cleverness at manipulating perception, the more it hurts when the ability to affect that perception is taken away.
I won't gloat - there is something bittersweet in contemplating the wreckage that one's enemy has become even if he deserves it. One might say "I feel your pain."
I’m very fond of fat, big, old dogs. That’s about the last thing I’d think of comparing clinton to.
Old Elvis? I kind of liked old Elvis.
A goat, maybe, but he’s too fat to be a goat. I dunno. He’s one of a kind, a hillbilly-mobster-psychopathic-narcissistic-yuppie-traitor rapist. I hope he’s finally about to fade from the news and out of view.
Clinton was a “star.” Obama is the new “star.”
Maybe he should put some ice on it!
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