Clinton takes pulpit for Davis - Ex-president rallies blacks against recall

LOS ANGELES -- California Gov. Gray Davis enlisted the help of the Democratic Party's biggest name on Sunday in his attempt to keep his job and defeat what he once again characterized as a Republican power grab.

Former President Clinton implored members of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Central Los Angeles to tell their friends and neighbors to vote against the recall on Oct. 7, saying it wasn't just bad for Davis but for the state and the entire country.

"Gray Davis and I have been friends for a long time. I don't want this happening to him . . . but this is way bigger than him," Clinton told a cheering crowd of several hundred at the mostly black church.

"It's you I'm worried about," he said. "It's California I'm worried about. I don't want you to become a laughingstock, a carnival or the beginning of a circus in America where we just throw people out for making tough decisions."

"You don't want to do this," Clinton said of the effort to remove Davis less than a year after he was re-elected to a second four-year term.

Clinton's appearance in California came a day after the leading Republican in the chaotic recall race, Arnold Schwarzenegger, invoked another ex-president, Ronald Reagan, in a speech at his party's state convention.

While not specifically mentioning trailing state Sen. Tom McClintock, the other major Republican candidate who is shaping up to be a potential spoiler in the race, Schwarzenegger suggested his party needs to solidify around a single candidate.

"We as Republicans have a choice to make," he said, harkening back to a 1964 Reagan speech called "A Time for Choosing." "Are we going to be united or are we going to be divided?"

In recent polls, Schwarzenegger trails Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, by a close margin of 30 percent to 25 percent. McClintock is third, with about 13 percent. Many Republicans are starting to agree with Schwarzenegger that McClintock should drop out of the race to get the party behind a single candidate if they want to win the governor's office in the unusual recall race. McClintock has vowed he will not drop out.

Polls also show Californians are closely divided on whether to recall Davis. A Los Angeles Times poll shows respondents saying they're evenly split.

Clinton, who is still very popular in California and visited the state frequently while in office, also is expected to appear on Davis' behalf today.

Sunday, his 40-minute talk that was part stump speech, part sermon, was designed to appeal specifically to African-American voters, who typically comprise a slim but important 6 percent to 8 percent of the vote in most California elections, according to some estimates.

"They say he's really the first black president, regardless of his color . . . and I agree," said Cheryl Jackson, who attended Sunday's service. "I'm voting against the recall."

Others, however, used the gathering in the heart of one of the roughest areas of Los Angeles to rally for the recall and against Davis.

"He [Davis] needs to stand up like a man for all the mistakes he's made," said Luis Molina, who carried a "Yes on Recall" sign outside the church. Molina said he's a registered Independent who plans to vote for Schwarzenegger. "But no, he needs Big Daddy Bill to come here for him."

Davis spoke first to worshippers, occasionally invoking the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., biblical scripture and a touch of fire-and-brimstone.

"There are forces arrayed against us -- powerful forces both in California and Washington," Davis said, adding that Republicans behind the recall "threaten the very fabric of democracy."

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton (R) greets California Governor Gray Davis after speaking against the California recall and in support of Davis at a service at the First AME Church in Los Angeles, September 14, 2003. Davis faces a recall election October 7. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

A cry in the black education wilderness***The great disappointment of my ongoing crusade to foment a revolution in black education has been the lack of a response, and even hostility, from black leaders in this community. Naturally, I expected everyone to drop what they were doing and hop onto my education movement bandwagon.

To be sure, black readers in general have responded positively and in droves to the call for a black education movement along the lines of our historic civil rights movement. They have said they agree that this movement must demand rigorous academic standards and a high level of parental responsibility and community involvement to ensure black children's success.

In a comment typical of many I've received, a reader wrote, "We as black people must begin to create a culture of valuing education ... if we are to ever pull our children out of the river of underachievement in which they find themselves. I believe that this can be done, but it will require a new and different determination on the part of the black community, and every black parent in particular, before it will be achieved."

Another reader wrote, "I am just frustrated at our community's complacency towards education and the willingness of so many parents to allow their children to waste their young years on activities that do not help them become competitive in academia. ... I'm making the effort to convert as many [people] as I can. I think I successfully turned my husband around. He was wiling to buy his children-to-be their first car but would not fund their college education. Now THAT had to change."

But I've heard little from Houston's black leadership. ***

Hillary Clinton and the Third Way By David Horowitz [Excerpt from Hillary Clinton and the Third Way] Is there a practical difference in the modus operandi of Clinton narcissism and Clinton messianism? I think there is, and it is the difference between "triangulation"-a cynical compromise to hang onto power until the next election cycle, and "The Third Way"-a cynical deception to ensure the continuance of Us, until we acquire enough power to transform everyone else. It is the difference between the politics of getting what you can, and the politics of changing the world.

A capsule illustration of these different political ambitions can be found in the book Primary Colors , which describes, in thinly veiled fiction, Bill Clinton's road to the presidency. Primary Colors is an admiring portrait not only of the candidate, but of the dedicated missionaries-the true believing staffers and the long-suffering wife-who serve Clinton's political agendas, but at the price of enabling the demons of self.

These staffers-political functionaries like Harold Ickes and George Stephanopoulos-serve as the flak-catchers and "bimbo eruption"-controllers who clean up his personal messes and shape his image for gullible publics. But they are also the idealists who design his message. And in the end, they enable him to politically succeed.

It is Primary Colors' insight into the minds of these missionaries that is revealing. They see Clinton clearly as a flawed and often repellent human being. They see him as a lecher, a liar and a man who would destroy an innocent person in order to advance his own career. (This is, in fact, the climactic drama of the text). Yet through all the sordidness and lying, the personal ruthlessness and disorder, the idealistic missionaries faithfully follow and serve the leader.

They do it not because they are themselves corrupted through material rewards. The prospect of fame is not even what drives them. Think only of Harold Ickes, personally betrayed and brutally cast aside by Clinton, who nonetheless refused to turn on him, even after the betrayal. Instead, Ickes kept his own counsel and protected Clinton, biding his time and waiting for Hillary. Then joined her staff to manage her Senate campaign.

The idealistic missionaries in this true tale bite their tongues and betray their principles, rather than betray him. They do so because in Bill Clinton they see a necessary vehicle of their noble ambition and uplifting dreams. He, too, cares about social justice, about poor people and blacks (or so he makes them believe). They will serve him and lie for him and destroy for him, because he is the vessel of their hope.

Because Bill Clinton "cares," he is the vital connection to the power they need to accomplish the redemption. Because the keys to the state are within Clinton's grasp, he becomes in their eyes the only prospect for advancing the progressive cause. Therefore, they will sacrifice anything and everything-principle, friends, country-to make him succeed.

But Bill Clinton is not like those who worship him, corrupting himself and others for a higher cause. Unlike them, he betrays principles because he has none. He will even betray his country, but without the slightest need to betray it for something else-for an idea, a party, or a cause.* He is a narcissist who sacrifices principle for power because his vision is so filled with himself that he cannot tell the difference.

But the idealists who serve him-the Stephanopoulos's, the Ickes's, the feminists, the progressives and Hillary Clinton-can tell the difference. Their cynicism flows from the very perception they have of right and wrong. They do it for higher ends. They do it for the progressive faith. They do it because they see themselves as having the power to redeem the world from evil. It is that terrifyingly exalted ambition that fuels their spiritual arrogance and justifies their sordid and, if necessary, criminal means. [End Excerpt]

In the thick of the drive to impeachment, people like myself were called "Clinton-haters." Being a Christian, I try not to hate anybody -- Nixon, in his farewell speech to his staff, also had some rare sage advice against not hating your enemies -- so I insisted that I didn't hate him.

But there were moments when feelings that could be called hatred when rise up in me when I would see that man in the black churches. Like no other white politician I have ever seen, he has connected with the black left and is accepted as one of the family, and when he was in office, whenever he was in his biggest trouble, he would find an excuse to speak in a black church to demonstrate how much common people adored him while evil white right wingers were trying to get him kicked out of power -- always implying that the reason why his enemies didn't like him is because he loved all of them.

Now, Clinton is tutoring the comparatively inept Gray Davis in doing so. To wit:

Davis spoke first to worshippers, occasionally invoking the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., biblical scripture and a touch of fire-and-brimstone.

"There are forces arrayed against us -- powerful forces both in California and Washington," Davis said, adding that Republicans behind the recall "threaten the very fabric of democracy."

Al Franken others want to insist that the media is biased right because they just accept what they are told instead of demanding answers. Well, I would like to hear a reporter ask either Clinton or Davis who these "forces" are that they are referring to. Are they talking about Darrell Issa? Melanie Morgan? Over a million signees to the recall petition?

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