Clinton seized the national attention after the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995 and, with the help of Dick Morris, set the theme: angry white males [read: Newt Gingrich and his House Republicans] bombed Oklahoma City. This, plus Gingrich's excesses, lowered the House Republicans' standing with the public; I should have seen this and didn't. Even more grievously, I failed to suggest that Clinton could employ something like his triangulating strategy, standing above liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, to strengthen his standing with the public. This he had effectively done by the end of 1995, and in 1996 the Clinton campaign shrewdly ran ads all across the country, except in Washington, New York and Los Angeles, while the Dole campaign, out of money, could put nothing on the air. There is an old rule in politics that presidents get in trouble in their second terms because out of hubris they go too far and therefore cost their party many seats in the offyear election. But Clinton had his hubris in his first two years and learned shrewdly from his setbacks.
The media never chastised Bill Clinton for politicizing the OKC bombing.
He even sent the FBI on a wild goosechase investingating the "right wing extremists" as this country's leading threat to national security. There was even the phoney "rash" of church fires that proved to be non-existent.