The Making of a Beltway Buffoon updated & bumped
David Broder ponders Carl Bernstein’s book on Clinton, A Woman in Charge.
Of the hundreds of pages, Broder takes away this conclusion:
But one thing is absolutely clear. Her marriage is the central fact in her
life, and this partnership of Bill and Hillary Clinton is indissoluble. She
cannot function without him, and he would not have been president without
her. If she becomes president, he will play as central a role in her presidency
as she did in his. And that is something the country will have to ponder.
Mr. Broder needs to get out more.
Now I know there are plenty who claim Bill Clinton’s presidency
was bad for Democrats, which is positively ridiculous. Democrats have been notoriously
dense on building infrastructure (starting with radio and the horrid Telecom Act of 1996), which certainly didn’t start with Clinton.
The man made mistakes, that’s for sure, starting with promoting gays in the
military out of the gate. But the fact that he was the first two-term Democratic
president since F.D.R. is shrugged off like it’s nothing. You’d be hard put to get some
to acknowledge even that accomplishment in the 1990s, which was fraught with
Clinton being targeted from the start by a political machine bent on payback. As Bernstein says in his
book on Hillary, quoting Alan Simpson who verified it, the wingnuts wanted his skin to make good on what happened to Nixon, and Clinton was where they were going to get it.
“Now that I’m leaving office I can tell you something. You are going to suffer immeasurable difficulty, and this is payback (by Republicans) for Watergate. So expect the worst,” Simpson had said. *Simpson, in a conversation with this author in 2006, confirmed the account of the conversation in the Oval Office…
A Woman in Charge, by Carl Bernstein (pg. 273)
Many who criticize Clinton today weren’t even active enough to understand the politics of the 1990s, but that doesn’t keep some from pontificating through their alleged progressive prejudices. It’s nonsense to suggest Bill Clinton was anything but an asset to the Democratic Party. Perfect he was not, but there isn’t one politician today who could have not only withstood the attacks he and Hillary did in the 1990s, but also managed to get elected to a second term in spite of the slander and libel that represented that era.
The bottom line is that people don’t vote on policies, progressive or otherwise. People vote for someone because of how that person makes them feel. It’s emotional. It’s the connection.
Today, in the public at large, Clinton’s presidency brings back good memories
and a time when the world respected the president and this country. When diplomacy mattered and preemptive attack was unthinkable. People like
my husband, once a die hard right-wing Republican, started walking away from
the GOP during the late 1990s, inspired by the vengeful lying of people like Rush Limbaugh. Today, he is a staunch defender of President
Clinton’s presidency, as well as a hard core Democrat. He saw what the right-wing
did to the Clintons, and hasn’t turned on Rush Limbaugh (unless I request he
listen in) since.
Winning is important. Bill Clinton, with all of his faults, showed Democrats
how to win. It’s no small thing. Clinton also showed Democrats how to fight.
We lost that in 2000 and 2004. When people think of Hillary Clinton, many things come to mind, but one thing
stands out, besides her ability to take a punch, stand tall and punch back. Her husband’s presidency is remembered as a time of prosperity, relative peace, and a time when America was respected around the world, and the economy was for everyone.
If you saw the Clinton
interview with Larry King last night you came away with something fundamental.
The striking difference between Bill Clinton and the ridiculously incompetent
George W. Bush.
David Broder is wrong, blinded by beltway ignorace of the basics. The American people overwhelmingly have decided about
Bill Clinton. They’d switch him with George W. Bush in a heart beat. In fact,
many people would re-elect him today if they could. There’s nothing
left to ponder.
If Sen. Clinton wins the Democratic presidential nomination and goes on to
win the general election in 2008, 60 percent of Americans believe her husband
would have a positive effect on her administration, while 30 percent think
it would be negative. President Clinton served two terms as commander-in-chief.Poll:
Former president would be an asset to Sen. Clinton in White House
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