Posted on 06/29/2004 1:16:31 AM PDT by kattracks
Since 1960 we have had only two politically successful presidents -- reaffirmed and re-elected, dominating their decades: Reagan and Clinton. (Except for Kennedy, whose presidency was cut short, the others -- Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush [41] -- were repudiated.) Clinton's autobiography, appearing as it does in such close conjunction to the national remembrance of Reagan, invites the inevitable comparison.The contrast is obvious. Reagan was the hedgehog who knew -- and did -- a few very large things: fighting and winning the Cold War, reviving the economy and beginning a fundamental restructuring of the welfare state. Clinton was the fox. He knew -- and accomplished -- small things. His autobiography is a perfect reflection of that: a wild mish-mash of remembrance, anecdote, appointment calendar and political payback. The themeless pudding of a million small things is just what you would expect from a president who once gave a Saturday radio address on school uniforms.
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
slick willie, what a putz.
By my standards, another puffball. Just hearing Rush talk about Vince Foster was harder hitting than this. One thing I didn't know, even after having read Ruddy's book, was all the pressure being put on the media to tone down Foster reports. They told the media that it could damage the economy. As word came out it was a possible murder, the stocks were spiralling, and they blamed Rush for it. They claimed that Rush caused it by talking about it, and the paper that was going to break a report chickened out, best I could tell, after hearing Limbaugh. Could it be that Ken Starr manipulated the Foster investigation, hamstringing Rodriguez, believing that blood could trickle uphill and corpses could levitate, that Ken Starr did all that in the name of stock market stability?
To be clear, I don't blame Limbaugh. He just wanted the truth out. The paper chickened out, probably from the 'do it for the economy' routine.
As most always, the best is said in the last paragraph.
It seems to me that the left wing media was able to set a tone about how to talk about Clinton as recently as the late '90s. Or maybe it was the FBI file threat that set the tone. Even today, Rush is being attacked, and I believe it is because of his willingness to talk about Foster, Waco, etc. Any high profile media figure who does that is vulnerable. I still wonder if Clinton was behind the outing of James Traficant.
Regardless of why, the New Media is bogged down by a tone set by the leftists of the '90s. They seem locked in, somehow, despite overwhelming facts. It's like cattle being herded.
If even remotely accurate, it explains how they were able to cling to power.
I don't know why the author of the article includes Nixon as being repudiated by the voters. Nixon won re-election in a land slide in 1972. Of course Eisenhower easily won re-election and dominated the 50's. FDR dominated the 30's and the 40's and would probably have been re-elected if he had lived.
No Republican president could have survived any such revelation; you can stack whatever you think of Abu Graab on top of whatever you think of Iran Contra and it doesn't match Filegate. To have 2000 counts of a felony in the WH, and to do nothing but fire one flunky!! But of course, Congress was Democratic back then, so there was no danger of impeachment - and even when the Republicans took Congress they didn't have a mandate to revisit Filegate.
But certainly, no Republican could have been renominated unopposed - let alone reelected - with a Filegate on his record.
... ping
Copied & saved- thanks!
As far as I'm concerned, the first question any Democratic presidential candidate should answer is, "You didn't oppose the renomination and reelection of Bill Clinton after Filegate. What has the Republican candidate done which compares to the commission of 2000 felonies in the WH basement followed by no prosecutions and only one firing? Why do you oppose the reelection of Mr. Bush if he has been trustworthy, when you supported the reelection of Mr. Clinton knowing that he was not?
Anyone who thinks that journalism doesn't favor Democrats (hello, Michael Moore) should just hold their breath waiting for a journalist to ask a Democrat that!
bump
Didn't one of the Watergate guys get prison for ONE FBI file? Charles Colson, maybe?
Surely some of these 700 people whos FBI files were held were clean. Having an FBI file is no big deal if there is nothing bad in it. Why couldn't some of these clean people have stood up to clinton? Am I naive?
God knows I hate to quote anyone from the Clinton administration, but Bill Cohen correctly identified FBI files as "raw sewage..."
I have one on me.
Think about this very carefully- imagine what every person you ever ran across in your life might tell a government official about "what they know about you."
Then imagine said official writes all of that, without comment, redaction, or correction into a report.
That's an FBI file.
Backhoe, do you have a link for this question?
If one hits a hornets nest w/ a baseball bat, one gets a predictable result.
The Arabs firmly believe our nation is ANTI Arab ... my question is this:
Why, given the Arabs history of going nuts against America relating to Israel, would the PRESIDENT of the USA, who had an endless supply of women of all backgrounds, choose a Jewish girl to have an affair with? Why? Talk about taking a media ball bat to Arab sensibilities. Talk about providing MOTIVATION!
The real question is this ... why is so little ever, ever written about the impact in the Arab world of one stupid chick and one stupid president named Monica and Bill ....
I bet a LOT has been written about it .... in Arabic.
So many ways to blackmail. Blackmail to change a vote, to look the other way, to vouch for the character of the Clintons before Congress...the list is long. But then so was the list of scandals, -gates, etc. the Clintons dumped on us.
Of course, the Clintons said it was all a mistake and that no one looked at the files. I believe they published a list of the names of the people whose files were taken. And, of course, no one of any consequence had their files taken. Yeah, right...
I am amazed by two things Clinton: that we, as a nation, survived him and his crime family and that he remains so wildly popular.
Me, too.
The highest "official count" of FBI files was the Wall Street Journal's 1,100. I have the article somewhere in my scrapbook, but no link handy.
The highest wild-assed guess I ever read about was 3,100 on some obscure website I visited.
And yes, since the files contain virtually anything anyone might say, guess, speculate, or even fantasize about a subject, without correction, they can be quite damaging.
I mean, say my neighbor tells an agent I molest goats, he records that, without comment or corroboration... how in Sam Hill do you counter something like that, in writing, on an official-looking "report?"
Sure did - that's what got him motivated to start a prison ministry. In a Republican administration, one felony count is a cause celebre; in a Democratic administration it's really no big deal by the time the next election comes around.
Btw, yes or no, have you stopped molesting goats? ;)
I was Newted, I was stressed, I was Tripped, |
Actually, it was that nice-looking sheep over there... and they say sheep can remember up to 10 friendly faces for two years...
How can Charles make the argument that impeached Clinton was successful, but resigned before being impeached Nixon was not? Nixon was also re-elected.
The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.
In many ways, the book is a mirror of Mr. Clinton's presidency: lack of discipline leading to squandered opportunities; high expectations, undermined by self-indulgence and scattered concentration. But the very lack of focus and order that mars these pages also prevented him from summoning his energies in a sustained manner to bring his insights about the growing terror threat and an Israeli-Palestinian settlement to fruition.
"My Life" has little of classic's unsparing candor or historical perspective. Instead, it devolves into a hodgepodge of jottings: part policy primer, part 12-step confessional, part stump speech and part presidential archive, all, it seems, hurriedly written and even more hurriedly edited.
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LOL funny
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"CHARLES the K" is the best Political Commentator on the entire FoX News Channel.
(Guests on 'Special Report with BRIT HUME' ..wheelchair & all)
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NEVER FORGET
...TWA Flight 800 went down the very night before CRAIG LIVINGSTONE was to appear on National TV to tell the U.S. Senate, Under Oath, that HILLARY was the one who hired him to get her FBI Files on Republicans in Congress or to Plead the 5th against self-incrimination instead.
...Starting that morning ..which Event did you see 24/7 TV Disaster Coverage of on your TV's and which Event got CANCELLED out of respect for those newly killed in a burning Jetliner Crash the night
before..?
...Thought so ...for the CLINTONS Lifetime M.O. has always been:
'It's the TV, Stupid, no matter WHO pays for it'
NEVER FORGET
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.."IS it SAFE?" = HILLARY on Senate Armed Services Committee..
http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=629
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RONNIE gave all = We have it all
http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3466
The Best thing about the Clinton Presidency
Clinton has been busy hyping his new book "My Life." The best thing about the Clinton Presidency is that it will be forgotten by history, a mere footnote. If it weren’t for an eccentric billionaire he wouldn’t have had even that much. Absent Ross Perot’s help there is no chance that Clinton could have beaten President Bush (41) and it is questionable if he could have even beaten the inept candidacy of Senator Robert Dole.
Without any major accomplishments the only note worthy event will be impeachment. By his demonstrated lack of respect for the Truth, the Rule of Law and the Judicial Branch of our Government, Clinton may have inadvertently achieved a minor historical legacy. No wonder he claims in the recent 60 Minutes interview that he will always wear impeachment as a badge of honor.
You can't run a presidency based on the evening news cycle and expect to get anything done. The Clinton presidency was so succinctly summed up by the Time magazine cover "The Incredible Shrinking Presidency". Once Clinton was gone, and unable to control the nightly news cycle, everyone was saying "Wow, there really wasn't much substance to that administration." The Clinton presidency will be remembered as a wasted 8 years in which Billary relished the power of being in control, and wasted the presidency by being drunk with power.
"...His great failing was foreign policy." ~ Krauthammer
Brilliant deduction --- but in 1992, that's what Rush said it would be:
Rush Limbaugh 10/17/02:
"...When Bill Clinton ran in 1992 on the themes "putting people first" and "it's the economy stupid," hammering George H.W. Bush for spending too much time in foreign policy, I said:
'You wait. When the history of this guy is written, his reputation and legacy are going to be done in by foreign policy snafus and nightmares because he was openly disdainful of it.'
He's a masterful spinner, so he blames the current administration for all the problems he left us. But that doesn't change the fact that this is his legacy, or that we confronted the North Koreans with evidence that they'd built nukes and forced them to admit it.
The bottom line is, before Clinton came to office, Pakistan and India did not have nuclear weapons. Now they do. Before he came to office, Red China was unable to target American cities with nuclear warheads. Now they can. Before he came to office, North Korea did not have nuclear weapons. Now they do. And while he was in office, he did nothing to stop Iraq from its nuclear weapons development."
The above was excerpted from this item, copied in full below:
Clinton & Carter Entwined In Embrace of History
October 17, 2002
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/cold/oct_17_clinton___carter_entwined_.member.html
What we have in North Korea is another monumental Clinton administration screw-up dropped into George W. Bush's lap. We are only now beginning to see the real damage that the Clinton administration inflicted on this country and its position in the world. The examples run from September 11th to North Korea, from the Chinese being able to orbit ICMBs and put multiple warheads on each, all the way through to a newly nuclear India and Pakistan.
[]
[] Those of us who thought that Clinton's legacy would be corruption and sleaze were only half right. It's going to be far worse. All those treaties, bilateral agreements and Rose Garden ceremonies were the actions of an appeaser that have seriously damaged our national security. I think Clinton just didn't want to face problems. He didn't want to do anything to stop his supposedly roaring economy, so he presided over a "nothing" administration.
When Bill Clinton ran in 1992 on the themes "putting people first" and "it's the economy stupid," hammering George H.W. Bush for spending too much time in foreign policy, I said, "You wait. When the history of this guy is written, his reputation and legacy are going to be done in by foreign policy snafus and nightmares because he was openly disdainful of it." He's a masterful spinner, so he blames the current administration for all the problems he left us. But that doesn't change the fact that this is his legacy, or that we confronted the North Koreans with evidence that they'd built nukes and forced them to admit it.
The bottom line is, before Clinton came to office, Pakistan and India did not have nuclear weapons. Now they do. Before he came to office, Red China was unable to target American cities with nuclear warheads. Now they can. Before he came to office, North Korea did not have nuclear weapons. Now they do. And while he was in office, he did nothing to stop Iraq from its nuclear weapons development.
[]
At least When Hitler Invaded Poland, Neville Chamberlain Admitted His Mistake
Clinton simply followed in the footsteps of another foreign policy luminary, the Nobel Appease Prize-winning Jimmy Carter. Carter ran to North Korea almost without permission, and saved Clinton from having to make a decision. (See audio link below.) Have you ever noticed that the left loves anti-American dictators like North Korea's and Cuba's and the PLO's, but they can't take pro-American dictators like the Shah of Iran?
Some of this stuff is just laughable. February 5, 2002's New York Times recounted Bill Clinton speaking after dinner one night at the Waldorf-Astoria at the World Economic Forum. "On North Korea, I have a totally different take," he said. "I figure I left the next administration with a big foreign policy win." Oh really? Clinton also gave a September 2000 speech at Georgetown where he claimed that stopping the proliferation of WMDs was his "very top priority."
You can hear me read more fanciful claims from Clinton's speech in the audio link below – such as claiming he'd kept Saddam completely in check with the embargo. That embargo is Swiss cheese! Why, the U.S. State Department has even caught Saddam exporting food - and you people blame the sanctions and not the dictator for starving his people! These people take any excuse to look at evil and not see it. So when Jimmy Carter called and said that Kim Il Sung was a cool guy, Clinton jumped at the chance to pass more impotent UN resolutions or sign another meaningless piece of paper.
[Click on link to read more]
read later
read later
Absolutely my most favorite. He so easily and succinctly blasts holes in the liberal panel members' arguments. He also often appears to be in quiet pain and has an obvious spinal problem (so the wheelchair?) What does he suffer from?
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