Clinton: the man who won't go away

townhall.com ^ | 4/04/02 | Cal Thomas

[kattracks]

Bill Clinton won't go away. He's pictured on the April 8 cover of Newsweek flying the New York-Washington shuttle. With what he gets for speeches (reportedly $200,000 to $300,000 overseas and $100,000 and up domestically), not to mention his $12 million book deal, he could afford a private jet, but this is about image.

Clinton tells Newsweek that in hindsight he would not have pardoned financier Marc Rich, but based only on political considerations - not principle. Clinton wasn't asked whether he regrets any of his other last-minute stealth pardons, including one for his brother, Roger. Nor was he asked about the pardons he refused to grant for some who went to jail for him, including his old "friend" Webster Hubbell, former Associate Attorney General; Jim Guy Tucker, former Arkansas governor; or Whitewater figure Susan McDougal, who never gave up her right to remain silent. Clinton once told a group of Houston business leaders that he regretted raising their taxes "too much." No doubt the pollsters, always Clinton's guiding light, were responsible for both of these "regrets."

Also in Newsweek, Clinton resurrects the "vast right-wing conspiracy" theory made famous by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Members of "the permanent right-wing establishment" were "traumatized" when he won the presidency, Clinton claims, because they "just thought they were entitled to rule." Over the years, Clinton has blamed right-wingers (but never himself) for his problems.

Clinton won't go away because he's not finished. He'll spend the rest of his life, like Jacob Marley, dragging around chains of his own making and trying to purge the public's memory of his serial misdeeds.

The former President still has a few allies, whose futures are in part conditional on explaining their own past enabling of a man in need of psychological, not to mention spiritual help. Those wild and crazy Clinton political strategists Paul Begala and James Carville, (now "on the left" on CNN's "Crossfire") have co-authored a book with a title as cluttered as their defense of the former president: "Buck Up, Suck Up ...and Come Back When You Foul Up."

In a March interview for the Web page, "BuzzFlash," Begala makes claims that are as preposterous as Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." He asserts, "We were the most ethical administration in history." His evidence is that no Clinton administration figure was indicted. No, but the top guy was impeached. And the Independent Counsel's office said there was plenty of evidence of wrongdoing.

It's difficult to select the funniest defense of Clinton in the Begala interview, but it could be his claim that Republicans use negative campaigning because "they know they can't win on the merits and on the ideas...Clinton was not a 'so is your mother' kind of politician." And what "ideas" did Clinton have that he wasn't willing to jettison if the polls showed his popularity would go up if he flipped? Welfare reform? He first opposed it but then supported it when polls showed the people were in favor. There are many other examples.

Begala then goes on the couch. Asked by BuzzFlash, "How can you explain the virulent hate that so many people in the right wing have for Clinton?" he answers, "I believe these people hate themselves. I believe they hate our country. I believe they hate our culture (he's right about that, especially a culture that would tolerate the kind of unethical and immoral behavior that defined Bill Clinton). They can't accept the level of self-loathing that they have, and so they project it onto someone else."

Begala notes that "for all of his faults (I thought he didn't have any!) and the troubles in his marriage, Bill Clinton is still married to a girl he met in the library 25 years ago at school...he is a man who, until he became the President of the United States of America, never earned more than $35,000 a year because he put service first." Right! Servicing women too numerous to list.

"By any standard of measure," Begala asserts, Clinton "is a good man. He is a decent man. He is a successful man."

By any standard? The Ten Commandments? The Constitution? Nice try, Paul, but even many of your co-apologists don't believe that.

Read Cal Thomas' biography

©2002 Tribune Media Services

[JessicaDragonet]

I have no idea why these people are trying to re-sell Clinton to the American public. But to do it at a time when the world is in turmoil..to think that we should be focusing our attention on him and his petty little problems...is nauseating.

This was a man so stupid that he couldn't figure out that presidents shouldn't be getting blow jobs in the oval office during working hours. When you exibit idiocy of that level...how could you expect anyone to trust your judgment about anything else?

The die is cast.

[Ann Archy]

Clinton is so "teenager-ish"...it's hard to believe that he was President. President Eddie Haskell.

And Begala is a syncophant's synophant....who would watch that hideous person is BEYOND me.

[backhoe]

Like the chains on Marley's Ghost

That "clinton legacy" has been forged link by link by sordid link....

Madison Society - Slick Willy
... THE CLINTON TIME LINE. The Etherzone provides, in one location, all the events
of the Clinton Ongoing Corruption from 1977 through 2000. Read more. ...

CLINTON'S ROGUES GALLERY:
... And that gets to my second chart, Mr. Speaker, which is the time line.....Up until
1993, Mr. Speaker, under Democrats and Republican Presidents alike, there ...

The Cost of Life (Clinton/Gore Sellout of Security for Campaign Contributions) **FR EXCLUSIVE** #2

-DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON --

---

"Has that clinton "legacy" made you feel safer yet?"
Lest Americans ever forget why the clintons, and all their enablers need to be hectored, hounded, and harried into silence, until "clintonese is only spoken in Hell," look here:

The Holiday *Best* of Bill Clinton & his Friends!

Hodgepodge O' Hillary

-clintonism in one easy lesson--

-"until clintonese is spoken only in Hell!"--

Hillary! and Arafat's wife-

---

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[Movemout]

You've nailed it exactly. Nauseating is too mild a word.

[LoisHunt]

It would have been a more honest article if Cal Thomas had addressed some specifics mentioned in the Newsweek article, like explaining WHY? it was that the elder Bush pardoned Orlando Bosch, believed by our own FBI to be a terrorist responsible for downing an airliner with over 70 people on board.

I started having second thoughts about how terrible, terrible, terrible the Clintons were when I read about Lamar Alexander's business dealings in the '96 New Hampshire primary. Alexander's good old boy money grubbing cronyism made the worst you could IMAGINE about Whitewater (which apparently was never provable, probably never true) look puny. Alexander was helped to make a million dollars off a $1 investment. But Alexander was confirmed by the Senate as the first Bush's Education Secretary by 100-0, with all the money grubbing sleaze right out there for the Senators to see.

Something about Clinton galled the Washington establishment and they went after him for stuff they never went after other pols on.

[Jimmy Valentine]

Carville & Begala.....BLUE DRESS DEMOCRATS

Regards,

[Carolinamom]

Dragging out that old "Clinton never made more than $35,000" (as Arkansas gov.) is true as far as it goes, BUT "they" never seem to include the fact that he did have an UNLIMITED expense account while gov.

[backhoe]

Dragging out that old "Clinton never made more than $35,000" (as Arkansas gov.) is true as far as it goes

Like everything else connected with the clintons, a half-truth conceals further lies, spin, and obsfucations....

"Dragging Out" could be another title for that "legacy"-- they just never will go away, will they?

And the endless, tireless, never-silent legions of enablers, shills, and apologists who have invested so much of themselves in these serial frauds can't stay quiet, either.

[Tallguy]

Lamar Alexander was never nominated by the Republican Party, much less elected President. In his case, the process "de-selected" him for higher office. In Clinton's case, the system failed.

[LoisHunt]

I've been reading here on FR that the Bush Whitehouse is pushing Alexander for the TN Senate candidate. Lamar! and his wife had so many scuzzy deals they made Clinton and Hillary look like very garden variety statehouse pol sweetheart dealers. But the big thing was how the media and the Republican establishment and the Democratic establishment wouldn't make a big deal of Alexander's business dealings that made him a rich man from investments he could never have gotten in on without being "sponsored." It wasn't until Steve Forbes made an issue of it that it made the news and had commentators like Don Imus calling Alexander a "crook."

[Orual]

Entirely in character, when Clinton was asked what the worst thing was that had happened to him in the past year, he replied that the loss of his dog, Buddy, tossed him into the depths of despair. Guess he forgot about 9/11.

[Slyfox]

He forgot about his true legacy. Click on my profile page. The Clinton Crime List is now too long to put on a thread.

[f.Christian]

Oh... BEAST TRAIN---crashing louder
Crash on the BEAST train
Come on crashing BEAST train
Yes, BEAST train crashing harder

[Fitzcarraldo]

Please add this link to your list:

CLINTON CRIME SYNDICATE EXILE TO ELEPHANT ISLAND: A MODEST PROPOSAL

[dighton]

The rat who'll never scat

[murdoog]

Do you have a brother named Mike?

[LoisHunt]

Yes, I do have a brother named Mike/Michael.

[steve-b]

Clinton tells Newsweek that in hindsight he would not have pardoned financier Marc Rich, but based only on political considerations -- not principle.

Clowntoon wouldn't know a principle if it bit him on his little bent willie.

[Tallguy]

Lamar Alexander strikes me as the perfect establishment politician. He has never struck me as the type of politician that is capable of attracting support on the basis of his ideas. I am left with the conclusion that he is a deal-cutter -- which, by the way, probably makes him well suited to sit in the Senate

Frankly, I think that Alexander's candidacy for the Senate could easily be derailed by almost any other Republican with a pulse. Look at what happened to Riordan in California.

Returning to Alexander's alleged unsavoriness for a moment, I have always thought that the reason that they didn't go after Hillary on the Cattle-futures deal was that financial chicanery of this type is the standard way of bribing politicians these days. If they nailed Hillary, where would the bloodletting end? Spiro Agnew seems positively straight-forward by comparison when you consider the fact that his bribes at least came in a Brown Paper Bag.