AFTERWORD: ON CLINTON SMALLNESS--BRINKLEY MISSES THE POINT (CLINTON'S HOFSTRA APOLOGIA)

Hofstra University, History News Network ^ | 12.27.05 | Mia T

[Mia T]

 AFTERWORD:

ON CLINTON SMALLNESS--BRINKLEY MISSES THE POINT

THE FAILED, DYSFUNCTIONAL CLINTON PRESIDENCY
(DECONSTRUCTING CLINTON'S HOFSTRA SPEECH)
part1: The "Brinkley" Lie

 

by Mia T, 12.27.05

 

One of the American historians I most admire, Douglas Brinkley out there, sitting here, was quoted in the paper today as saying that I would be viewed as a great president except for the fact of the impeachment, which is just there.

bill clinton
Hofstra apologia
November 11, 2005

clinton's ranking will likely get worse over time. Economic issues fade in importance. Moral issues presist and grow. (paraphrase)

Douglas Brinkley
February 2000
(discussing C-SPAN PRESIDENTS POLL)
Washington Journal

Note that although Brinkley doesn't place much importance on the economic management dimension--he argues that the economy variable is not durable over time--he fails to recognize that the evaluation of the clinton economy by the historians is erroneous to begin with.

Note also that C-SPAN historians found no evidence of clinton "greatness" irrespective of his moral-authority deficit, contrary to Douglas Brinkley's claim made at the clinton revisionist confab³.

(NOTE: My later research has revealed that Brinkley's qualified mention of clinton "greatness" was not a claim but rather a polite guest's white lie about an abject loser. Instead of taking the AP report at face value, one must carefully parse Brinkley's actual words and especially note the subjunctive construction.)

Mia T, 11.10.05
Historian massages clinton numbers, ego + legacy at revisionist confab
C-SPAN historians find no clinton "greatness" irrespective of moral-authority deficit

The term "great" is probably an overused term. There are only a few presidents who make that top tier: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Thomas Jefferson, and a few others who might be there.

I don't think bill clinton ever reached that category.

One, it's hard if you're not a wartime president

Note to Douglas Brinkley (NTDB):
clinton WAS a wartime president. The problem is, he surrendered.

Preemptively.

You might say the clinton approach to The War on Terror was the perverse obverse of The Bush Doctrine.

or have some huge event.

NTDB:
clinton had one almost immediately, which he summarily ignored, the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, the 1993 WTC bombing.

Do you recall that he urged us to ignore the bombing, too? Ignore the first major Islamofascist terrorist attack on the continental United States?!

Did you know clinton never visited the site? (And he was only 15 minutes away mere days after the bombing. He chose, instead, to give some forgettable speech on --what else? -- the economy.)

 

Second, clinton is not known for something like Lyndon Johnson was -- The Civil Rights Act -- or even Theodore Roosevelt and conservation, or one big thing.

I think his successes were in welfare reform, economic discipline,trade pacts.

NTDB:
Arguable. He was dragged kicking and screaming by the Republicans.

Those are achievements, but they're hard to get people queuing up a hundred years from now excited to see the "NAFTA Pen Under Glass."

NTDB:
Great turn of phrase.

Douglas Brinkley
Nov. 12, 2005
The History News Network
Refuting clinton's Hofstra-apologia "Brinkley" lie

The clintons continue to imperil virtually every sector of society, indeed, continue to imperil America and the world, with their exponentially increasing facility in manipulating electoral/policy matter and energy at ever smaller scales. Their "school uniforms" of the '90s became "nanotech uniforms" today; both are proxies for "fight terrorism," which the clintons have neither the stomach nor the know-how to do.

NANO-PRESIDENT
the danger of the unrelenting smallness of bill + hillary clinton
by Mia T, 7.31.05

LEHRER: President Bush, your closing statement, sir.

PRESIDENT BUSH (audio): Three weeks from now--two weeks from tomorrow, America goes to the polls and you're going to have to decide who you want to lead this country ...

On foreign affairs, some think it's irrelevant. I believe it's not. We're living in an interconnected world...And if a crisis comes up, ask who has the judgment and the experience and, yes, the character to make the right decision?

And, lastly, the other night on character Governor Clinton said it's not the character of the president but the character of the presidency. I couldn't disagree more. Horace Greeley said the only thing that endures is character. And I think it was Justice Black who talked about great nations, like great men, must keep their word.

And so the question is, who will safeguard this nation, who will safeguard our people and our children? I need your support, I ask for your support. And may God bless the United States of America.

(Applause)

 

ouglas Brinkley totally misses the point of clinton smallness.

The clinton presidency was small not because of absence of opportunity, but rather because of absence of courage, vision, selflessness, real intelligence and a moral core.

The endless parade of clinton small was required to fill the void created by an absence of the big stuff -- big stuff like "fighting terrorism."

HORNS: Bush vs. clinton

 

by Mia T, 12.19.05

 

a tin-horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor

H.L. Mencken

 

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

The cowardly, self-serving, seditious clintons may have found temporary refuge in 'the gray twilight,' but, as 9/11 demonstrated, America was not similarly sheltered....

 

deconstructing clinton… "just because I could"


(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)
FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU! FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME! 

 

COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005

Good evening. Three days ago, in large numbers, Iraqis went to the polls to choose their own leaders -- a landmark day in the history of liberty. In the coming weeks, the ballots will be counted, a new government formed, and a people who suffered in tyranny for so long will become full members of the free world.

This election will not mean the end of violence. But it is the beginning of something new: constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East. And this vote -- 6,000 miles away, in a vital region of the world -- means that America has an ally of growing strength in the fight against terror.

President George W. Bush
President's Address to the Nation
The Oval Office
In Focus: Renewal in Iraq
December 18, 2005
9:01 P.M. EST

CHRIS MATTHEWS: 'BUSH BELONGS ON MOUNT RUSHMORE'
IF HE WINS 'GREATEST GAMBLE SINCE ROOSEVELT BACKED BRITAIN BEFORE WWII'

(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)
COMPLETE ARTICLE

VIDEO CLIP

December 7, 1941+64

AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO

RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton

Dear Concerned Americans,

Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The context of our concern today--regardless of political affiliation--is Iraq and The War on Terror, but the larger fear is that our democracy may not survive.

We have the requisite machines, power and know-how to defeat the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, but do we have the will?

In particular, do we have the will to identify and defeat the enemy in our midst?

Answerable to no one, heir apparent in her own mind, self-serving in the extreme, Hillary Clinton incarnates this insidious new threat to our survival.

What we decide to do about Missus Clinton will tell us much about what awaits us in these perilous new times.

COMPLETE LETTER

December 7, 1941+64
Mia T
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO
RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton


COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005

THE FAILED, DYSFUNCTIONAL CLINTON PRESIDENCY
(DECONSTRUCTING CLINTON'S HOFSTRA SPEECH)
part1: The "Brinkley" Lie

by Mia T, 12.26.05



(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)

 

ne would think that after bill clinton's shameless--pathetic, really--Hofstra apologia, Doris Kearns Goodwin and those 400 other hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton retrograde-obsessing historiographers would finally get it. But then, we are talking leftist lobe here....

The speech, full of poses, poll-tested phrases and prevarication, was just another example of the clintons' utter contempt. For the people, for the presidents, for the presidency, for the country, for the Constitution... and, ultimately I suspect, for themselves.

This endeavor is the first in a series of essays with video that will attempt to deconstruct this very revealing speech.

The clintons' fundamental error: They are too arrogant and dim-witted to understand that the demagogic process in this fiberoptic age isn't about counting spun heads; it's about not discounting circumambient brains. (Did bill clinton really think Douglas Brinkley would let the "clinton greatness but for impeachment" lie stand? Is clinton delusional? Or just plain dumb?)

 

 

COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005

 

I M P E A C H M E N T
h e a r --c l i n t o n --l o s e --i t


by Mia T, 11.11.05

This legacy confab is in and of itself proof certain of clinton's deeply flawed character, and a demonstration in real time of the way in which the clinton years were about a legacy that was incidentally a presidency.

Madeleine Albright captured the essence of this dysfunctional presidency best when she explained why clinton couldn't go after bin Laden.

According to Richard Miniter, the Albright revelation occurred at the cabinet meeting that would decide the disposition of the USS Cole bombing by al Qaeda [that is to say, that would decide to do what it had always done when a "bimbo" was not spilling the beans on the clintons: Nothing]. Only Clarke wanted to retaliate militarily for this unambiguous act of war.

Albright explained that a [sham] Mideast accord would yield [if not peace for the principals, surely] a Nobel Peace Prize for clinton. Kill or capture bin Laden and clinton could kiss the 'accord' and the Peace Prize good-bye.

If clinton liberalism, smallness, cowardice, corruption, perfidy--and, to borrow a phrase from Andrew Cuomo, clinton cluelessness--played a part, it was, in the end, the Nobel Peace Prize that produced the puerile pertinacity that enabled the clintons to shrug off terrorism's global danger.

COMPLETE ARTICLE

C-SPAN asked noted presidential historians to rank the American presidents¹ along the following ten dimensions: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with congress, vision/setting an agenda, pursued equal justice for all, and performance within context of times.

bill clinton emerged as middling in most dimensions; he was surpassed in others by a settled mediocrity (Carter) and a putative failure (Nixon). In moral authority, bill clinton was rated dead last.² He did fairly well in public persuasion, not a surprising finding given the volume of snake oil he managed to peddle during his putative presidency.

"It's NOT the economy, stupid!"

Clinton's best scores were on the economic management and pursued equal justice for all dimensions. However, both of these results are meaningful only insofar as they redound to the moral authority dimension: they are wholly based on clinton fraudulence, cooked books and black poses, respectively; and clinton's shameless Rosa Parks eulogy last week assured us that the insidious brand of clinton racism is alive and well during these tiptoe years of what the clintons hope will be their interregnum.

Note that although Brinkley doesn't place much importance on the economic management dimension--he argues that the economy variable is not durable over time--he fails to recognize that the evaluation of the clinton economy by the historians is erroneous to begin with.

Note also that C-SPAN historians found no evidence of clinton "greatness" irrespective of his moral-authority deficit, contrary to Douglas Brinkley's claim made at the clinton revisionist confab³.

(NOTE: My later research has revealed that Brinkley's qualified mention of clinton "greatness" was not a claim but rather a polite guest's white lie about an abject loser. Instead of taking the AP report at face value, one must carefully parse Brinkley's actual words and especially note the subjunctive construction.)

MIDDLING

Twenty presidents rank higher than bill clinton and 20 rank lower. But this placement assumes equal weight for each of the dimensions. And therein lies the flaw.

If 9/11 taught us anything, it is that presidential character and moral authority count, and count most.⁴ If the variables are properly weighted, bill clinton will always come out dead last.

That is, unless Americans are dumb enough to make the same mistake twice.

Mia T, 11.10.05
Historian massages clinton numbers, ego + legacy at revisionist confab
C-SPAN historians find no clinton "greatness" irrespective of moral-authority deficit

 

 

IT TAKES A CLINTON TO RAZE A COUNTRY
by Mia T, 11.14.05

(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)
 

 

[Mia T]

thanx :)

[Mia T]

thx :)

[Mia T]

bump

[ricks_place]

Clinton recognized the War on Terror (First World Trade Center bombing, USS Cole, two US Embassies bombings, and so forth) but refused the fight. He "kicked the can down the road" to some other President to avoid the risk and also to avoid a momentary or permanent popularity drop as measured by polls. President Clinton had his opportunity for Greatness but was frivolous, indecisive, and deceitful.

[PGalt]

A well-reasoned, right-on-the-money, follow-up to Clinton/Brinkley/Hofstra.

Your work is outstanding. Thanks Mia T.

[Mia T]

bump
There was another reason clinton didn't go after bin Laden.

[Mia T]

thanx. :)

[Mia T]

thx :)

[longfellow]

Does anyone realize the huge insult to the Puerto Rican community that klinton got away with when he released those terrorists to buy their vote for hitlary. He basically said, "all these spics are a bunch of criminals, so if I release these criminals they will like hitlary." But no one not even Rush picked up on that. And he feels the same way about blacks.

[Mia T]

bump

THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT?
clinton legacy of lynching update

[hattend]

BTTT

[Mia T]

thx :)

[Ditter]

I searching for clinton initiatives I remember mid night basket ball and the school uniform thingy.

[Seadog Bytes]

Thank you!

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones.   I wish, herefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Judge William Johnson, 12 June 1823)

[Wolverine]

bump

[yoe]

Ah Mia T, your preservation of the Clinton Chronicles is most appreciated; your hard work a blessing to all. Expose the MSM and their propaganda to get this woman (?) elected – the fabric that Ms. Clinton is made of can only be dry-cleaned so many times before is falls apart. The woman is a myth being marketed as a real person when in fact Ms. Clinton is a living lie; a long in the tooth legend of the feminist movement married to a rapist; was there ever such irony!

Happy New Year to you Mia T!

[Mia T]

Thank you and Happy New Year to you. :)

[Mia T]

bump

[jla]

bump

[Mia T]

Well, with the help of the 100 corrupt and cowardly cullions, clinton walked. The senators' justification for their acquittal votes requires the suspension of rational thought (and, in the curious case of Arlen Specter, national jurisdiction).

Mia T, Musings: Senatorial Courtesy Perverted

"Impeachment did not have to be for criminal offenses -- but only for a 'course of conduct' that suggested an abuse of power or a disregard for the office of the President of the United States ... A person's 'course of conduct' while not particularly criminal could be of such a nature that it destroys trust, discourages allegiance, and demands action by the Congress...The office of the President is such that it calls for a higher level of conduct than the average citizen in the United States."

Hillary Clinton
Democrat assistant, 1974
effort to impeach president Nixon

THE OTHER NIXON

 

by Mia T, 01.11.99

ypocrisy abounds in this Age of clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case of Jefferson, posthumously misappropriated.

Shameless pharisees in stark relief crowd the Capitol frieze:

Baucus, Biden, Bingaman, Breaux, Bryan, Byrd, Cohen, Conrad, Daschle, Dodd, Gore, Graham, Harkin, Hollings, Inouye, Kennedy, Kerrey, Kerry, Kohl, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Mikulski, Moynihan, Reid, Robb, Rockefeller, Sarbanes, Schumer.

These are the 28 sitting Democratic senators, the current Vice President and Secretary of Defense -- clinton defenders all -- who, in 1989, voted to oust U.S. District Judge Walter Nixon for making "false or misleading statements to a grand jury."

In 1989 each and every one of these men insisted that perjury was an impeachable offense. (What a difference a decade and a decadent Democrat make.)

Senator Herb Kohl (November 7, 1989):

"But Judge Nixon took an oath to tell the truth and the whole truth. As a grand jury witness, it was not for him to decide what would be material. That was for the grand jury to decide. Of all people, Federal Judge Walter Nixon certainly knew this.

"So I am going to vote 'guilty' on articles one and two. Judge Nixon lied to the grand jury. He misled the grand jury. These acts are indisputably criminal and warrant impeachment."

 

Senator Tom Daschle (November 3, 1989):

"This morning we impeached a judge from Mississippi for failing to tell the truth. Those decisions are always very difficult and certainly, in this case, it came after a great deal of concern and thoughtful analysis of the facts."  

 

Congressman Charles Schumer (May 10, 1989):  

"Perjury, of course, is a very difficult, difficult thing to decide; but as we looked and examined all of the records and in fact found many things that were not in the record it became very clear to us that this impeachment was meritorious."

 

Senator Carl Levin (November 3, 1989):

"The record amply supports the finding in the criminal trial that Judge Nixon's statements to the grand jury were false and misleading and constituted perjury. Those are the statements cited in articles I and II, and it is on those articles that I vote to convict Judge Nixon and remove him from office."

 

* * * * *

"The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself," observed the philosopher Hannah Arendt. "What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."

If hypocrisy is the vice of vices, then perjury is the crime of crimes, for perjury provides the necessary cover for all other crimes.

David Lowenthal, professor emeritus of political science at Boston College makes the novel and compelling argument that perjury is "bribery consummate, using false words instead of money or other things of value to pervert the course of justice" and, thus, perjury is a constitutionally enumerated high crime.

The Democrats' defense of clinton's perjury -- and their own hypocrisy -- is three-pronged. 

ONE:

clinton's perjuries were "just about sex" and therefore "do not rise to the level of an impeachable offense."

This argument is spurious. The courts make no distinction between perjuries. Perjury is perjury. Perjury attacks the very essence of democracy. Perjury is bribery consummate.

Moreover, (the clinton spinners notwithstanding), clinton's perjury was not "just about sex." clinton's perjury was about clinton denying a citizen justice by lying in a civil rights-sexual harassment case about his sexual history with subordinates.

TWO:

Presidents and judges are held to different standards under the Constitution.

Because the Constitution stipulates that federal judges, who are appointed for life, "shall hold their offices during good behavior,'' and because there is no similar language concerning the popularly elected, term-limited president, it must have been perfectly agreeable to the Framers, so the (implicit) argument goes, to have a perjurious, justice-obstructing reprobate as president.

clinton's defenders ignore Federalist No. 57, and Hillary Rodham's constitutional treatise on impeachable acts -- written in 1974 when she wanted to impeach a president; both mention "bad conduct" as grounds for impeachment.

"Impeachment," wrote Rodham, "did not have to be for criminal offenses -- but only for a 'course of conduct' that suggested an abuse of power or a disregard for the office of the President of the United States...A person's 'course of conduct' while not particularly criminal could be of such a nature that it destroys trust, discourages allegiance, and demands action by the Congress...The office of the President is such that it calls for a higher level of conduct than the average citizen in the United States."

deconstructing clinton… "just because I could"


(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)
FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU! FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME! 

Hamilton (or Madison) discussed the importance of wisdom and virtue in Federalist 57. "The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

(Contrast this with clinton, who recklessly, reflexively and feloniously subordinates the common good to his personal appetites.)

Because the Framers did not anticipate the demagogic efficiency of the electronic bully pulpit, they ruled out the possibility of an MTV mis-leader (and impeachment-thwarter!) like clinton. In Federalist No. 64, John Jay said: "There is reason to presume" the president would fall only to those "who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue." He imagined that the electorate would not "be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle."

(If the clinton debacle teaches us anything, it is this: If we are to retain our democracy in this age of the electronic demagogue, we must recalibrate the constitutional balance of power.)

THREE:

The president can be prosecuted for his alleged felonies after he leaves office. (Nota bene ROBERT RAY.)

This clinton-created censure contrivance -- borne out of what I have come to call the "Lieberman Paradigm" (clinton is an unfit president; therefore clinton must remain president) -- is nothing less than a postmodern deconstruction in which the Oval Office would serve for two years as a holding cell for the perjurer-obstructor.

Such indecorous, dual-purpose architectonics not only threatens the delicate constitutional framework -- it disturbs the cultural aesthetic. The senators must, therefore, roundly reject this elliptic scheme.

In this postmodern Age of clinton, we may, from time to time, selectively stomach corruption. But we must never abide ugliness. Never.

Sen. Dale Bumpers (AR): "There's only two years left. What harm can he do?"

 

COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005