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.
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