Posted on 06/08/2003 4:36:47 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Democrat activists to Clintons: 'Shut up' By Dick Polman Inquirer Staff Writer
Bill and Hillary: Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
Such is the Democratic lament, as the first couple emeritus bestrides the stage once again, soaking up precious attention that otherwise might go to the party's presidential candidates.
The candidates want to talk about 2004 and beyond. But those ubiquitous Clintons are poised to return us to 1998, the year of soaring tech stocks and sordid scandal, the year of Seinfeld's demise and Viagra's debut, the year when an intern's soiled dress sent conservative sleuths into overdrive.
Yes, it's a fresh chapter in the serial saga of He and She:
She is releasing a memoir, tomorrow, that resurrects seamy tales and disses her man. (Excerpt: "I wanted to wring Bill's neck.")
He, meanwhile, is pining for his old job, and thinks that presidents shouldn't be capped at eight years. (From a May appearance in Arkansas: "If we didn't have a two-term limit, I would've made you throw me out.")
She is coming to a TV near you, tonight, having already videotaped her deepest feelings for Barbara Walters on ABC. (An excerpt: "The jury was really out about whether the marriage would survive.")
He is hard at work on his own memoir (will it square with hers?), scheduled for release in the autumn of 2004 - which means he will be grabbing valuable air time from the Democrat who will be trying to unseat President Bush.
So maybe it's understandable that a sizable number of Democrats are mighty displeased with the Clintons these days. Many are afraid to be publicly identified, fearing unspecified repercussions from well-placed Clinton loyalists, but others are too furious to care.
Susan Estrich, who ran Michael Dukakis' campaign in 1988 and is now a law professor in California, said: "They [the Clintons] need to shut up. We've got to have the guts to say to them: 'Enough is enough, there are no state dinners anymore, stop sucking up all the oxygen.' We've got to get beyond our past, and move into the future.
"I like them, and I've defended them repeatedly in the past. But they're very divisive, and I don't think Hillary can ever be elected president. And his ego is so enormous, he just can't go gently into the night."
Tom Pazzi, a Democratic strategist who defends Bill Clinton and calls him an "asset," nevertheless lamented that "his book, coming out on the eve of an election - that would be very bad. That would make people pick over the entrails of the past. You don't want to be looking back in an election... . This gets us back to the Clinton psychoanalyses that we did before, that maybe it all springs from a lust for attention."
A veteran national Democratic strategist said: "A lot of us are basically sick of Bill, in particular. We just want him to get lost, but we can't totally speak out, because he's still a good fund-raiser, and a lot of party activists still think of him fondly, especially African Americans.
"But now here's Hillary, dredging up things we'd rather have people forget, all this evidence of Bill's duplicity. We already have enough problems with middle-class voters who think the Democrats as a party lack good morals and values - thanks to the Clintons - and this new stuff just makes it worse."
And let's not forget the current best-seller The Clinton Wars, by Sidney Blumenthal, the Clinton family friend and White House courtier, who has been working the talk-show circuit, refighting the impeachment battle and settling old scores for his patrons. In the words of one prominent Democrat: "Somebody should throw a blanket over him."
But the Clinton loyalists have a simple message for the angry Democrats: Chill out.
"I'm telling everyone to relax," party strategist David Axelrod said. Axelrod's client, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, a presidential candidate, speaks regularly with Bill Clinton. "It's almost amusing to me how out of sorts some people are. Right now, most Americans don't care about the election. They actually have lives to live. But next year, it's the nominee who will have the megaphone."
Axelrod acknowledged that the party's most prominent duo is viewed unfavorably by about half the American electorate (as new polls indicate), but, he said, "we can't deny them the right to speak out and to write books. And if I'm [Bill Clinton's] publisher, I'm thinking that a campaign is the best time to release his book."
Arnie Arnesen, a New Hampshire Democratic activist and ex-gubernatorial candidate, said: "I didn't like Clinton and I wanted him to resign [after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke]. But at this point, we should be asking people, 'What's worse? A president who lies about sex or a president who takes us to war by lying about weapons of mass destruction?' "
Party operatives remain deeply ambivalent toward the Clintons. On one hand, Democrats are wincing at the latest round of TV jokes (Jay Leno: "Hillary details what it was like meeting Bill, falling in love with him... . Then, on Page Two, the trouble starts"). Privately, some compare the ex-president to the Thing That Wouldn't Leave, the John Belushi character on Saturday Night Live who would ensconce himself on the couch and eat all the food.
Yet even Clinton's most vocal party critics still revere his political skills, and they are glad that Democratic presidential candidates are constantly invoking his record.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts lauds the 1990s economic boom, and says he worked with Clinton to achieve it. Edwards lifts phrases from Clinton's 1992 stump speech (extolling "People who work hard and play by the rules"), as does Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut ("Opportunity means nothing without responsibility").
That's smart, party strategist Raymond D. Strother said. He's no Clinton fan - in his new book, Falling Up: How a Redneck Helped Invent Political Consulting, Strother trashes his former client - but he says that Democrats would be better off if they complained less about Clinton and tapped his political wisdom more.
"The enemy is us, not Bill or Hillary," Strother said. "We don't have a message. We don't seem to stand for anything, whereas Bill Clinton stood for economic growth and how to get it... . We shouldn't be looking for excuses, like going after [Hillary Clinton's] book. That book is just the proverbial pimple on the elephant."
Estrich said it was fine for the Democratic candidates to invoke Clinton on the stump - but only during the primaries, "when you're just campaigning for the left-wing activists. But the nominee won't be able to talk a lot about Clinton next fall. Because, if you're campaigning for independent, swing voters, Clinton can hurt you."
And Clinton did himself no favors on May 28, Estrich said, when he declared his opposition to the constitutional amendment that caps a president's tenure at two terms. "To a lot of people, that looks unseemly. It looks like he has no life," she said.
Actually, he does have a life: Politician without portfolio - much like President Theodore Roosevelt, another restive political animal, who was only 50 when he left office. TR roamed the globe, overshadowing his successor, William Howard Taft, (even running against him in 1912, as a third-party candidate), and always thirsting to be what he called "the man in the arena."
Clinton rings up the candidates and offers unsolicited advice. He ricochets from corporate speeches to college commencements. But his biggest future gig could be backroom strategist in a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
She's eyeing a run in 2008; that's what the candor in her book is all about. Arnesen, in New Hampshire, offered a common interpretation: "By telling the world that he was a bastard, she's turning a page. She's saying that she's an independent player; that if she were to win the presidency, it would not be Bill's third term."
Perhaps. But presidential historian Douglas Brinkley cautioned that "the Clintons already polarize people, and her book will probably feed it - at a time when the party's candidates are struggling for attention. Bill and Hillary have become the king and queen of our tabloid culture - and if they don't want that title, they should lay low.
"But they don't know how to lay low."
Indeed...Bill and Ron Brown allowed to be sold the nation’s security to China and others. The Clintons sold the White House and anything that wasn’t nailed down there or on AFO. In order to cover up those illegal sales they are playing the sordid victims again while things like the FBI files in Hillary’s possession go unanswered...I’d love to know for instance, what those files were, Buzz Patterson speaks of them in his book "Dereliction of Duty", Hillary always had them her - what were they? Have the Clintons ever paid back the money they used for unauthorized travels? How can they furnish two huge houses and staff them; where do they live.
They came from Arkansas with very little in the way of furniture - remember the notes that went out to FOBs and FOHs asking for gifts to help furnish their house - how utterly tacky. But then, they are utterly tasteless people who as far as many of us are concerned, do not represent America or Americans. Industrial strength spot remover is needed to clean them out of politics and the DNC.
This isn't your parent's Perjury Party anymore - is it?
Oh? Kerry and Bubba founded all the worthless dot.com companies and snookered the the public into buying the shares? Somehow, that may be believable (at least on Bubba's part).
But, wait, I thought all the libs were telling us his comments about revising the 22nd Amm weren't about Bill?? I am soooo confused.[/sarcasm]
Gee, I didn't know McAuliffe disliked Bill that much.(/sarcasm off)
The Clintons aren't democrats, they're opportunists.
I just love it every time people give Clinton credit for the economy. That booming economy is a direct result of Reaganomics. Our current economy is a direct result of the Clinton's. It takes years for a president to be able to make a difference economically (although technology on a wide scale use -as it is now- is closing the gap somewhat). Bush, might be doing enough, quickly enough to get the economy going by the end of his next term in office, hopefully by his next mid-term.
BTW you are dead-on describing the Clintons as opportunists rather than dems. You hit the nail on the head. Great statement!
Susan Estrich, who ran Michael Dukakis' campaign in 1988 and is now a law professor in California, said: "They [the Clintons] need to shut up. We've got to have the guts to say to them: 'Enough is enough, there are no state dinners anymore, stop sucking up all the oxygen.' We've got to get beyond our past, and move into the future.
LOL, it's true! ;-D
We tried to throw you out Bill, but you blackmailed our Congress into stupidity.
As for Hillary, most former first ladies write the book after the White House. They are usually the nice memories of state dinners, etc. that one expects. Not Hillary, she is still fighting that boogie man, the Vast right wing demons she invoked everytime she and the crookster got caught. Dear God, make them go away!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.