Above my desk, amidst the clutter of memos and memorabilia, tickets and campaign buttons and photos of people's kids, is this picture. I like it for a couple reasons. First, for the half-smile on JPII's face, which seems to say, "Hey, he's no saint, but I can live with that." Second, because on the whole, the country was in a heck of a lot better shape then than it is now. He was a good President, that Bill Clinton. Not perfect, but then none of us are.
Well, that was then and this is now. Not only is Hillary no Bill Clinton, it seems Bill isn't either. It's difficult for me to believe that this same charismatic man who we've all defended, time and again, against ugly attacks from right wing smears has turned to using the same 'win at all cost' tactics as his detractors.
The Christian Science Monitor is calling on President Clinton to "Chill, Bill", deeming his attacks against Senator Obama beneath the stature of a president. Leading Democrats are asking President Clinton to back off, and caution that he's offending a lot of people. Bill has taken on the role of attack dog, a job that's typically reserved for the VP nominee against the other party.
Bill has chosen to use it against his own.
Yesterday, E.J. Dionne remarked on the Clintons' misrepresentation of Obama's remarks contrasting the Reagan presidency's impact with that of Nixon and Clinton, noting that "In Democratic circles, associating someone with Nixon is akin to a Roman comparing an emperor with Caligula." Well, E.J., has a point. Even though we know that Obama wasn't casting President Clinton in the same light as either Reagan or Nixon, and even though most people would agree with Obama's assessment, the comparison was likely to cause Bill to respond. But respond to what Obama actually said, and not a distortion of it. President Clinton chose to take the low road when, rather than promote his own positives, he went the faux outrage route and lost the argument with a tactical error. I expected better.
All that said, I can think of one person most Democrats dislike even more than Nixon. And when I read this the other day, my heart sank.
Just days after the November 2004 election, Bill Clinton pulled Rove aside at the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas. "Hey, you did a marvelous job, it was just marvelous what you did," Clinton told Rove, according to the book "The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008," by John F. Harris and Mark Halperin. "I want to get you down to the library. I want to talk politics with you. You just did an incredible job, and I'd like to really get together with you and I think we could have a great conversation."
And when this was later pointed out to me, that's when it broke.
Among the 100 members of Congress in the audience was Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry, just two weeks removed from the presidential race. The crowd, which had been bullied into silence by the weather, erupted in an enormous cheer when Kerry's arrival was shown on large video screens hanging above the bleachers from cranes. Here, too, was former Vice President Al Gore, who, some still argue, deserved to take over the White House in 2000.
I gave Bill the benefit of the doubt when he decided to hang with Poppy Bush. I thought it was pretty much golf and former President stuff. What could it hurt? I turned a blind eye to his acceptance of Bush the lesser for the same reason. And I wasn't even all that pissed when he published his memoirs just before the 2004 election. I thought it was pretty bad timing, but I didn't think it was intentional. Call me naive. Really, I deserve it. It just didn't click until now. The Rove thing was the straw that broke the camel's back, though. There's no excuse for taking a page from Rove's playbook. Not if you're a Democrat. Or a human being.
Obviously, President Clinton has every right to support Hillary. What husband wouldn't? But this is hurting us all, and it's time for Bill to take a step back and look at what he's doing to Democrats, to the country and to his own legacy. You're hurting us, Bill. Please stop.
Ever the diplomat, but not one to back down when the cause is just, Senator Kerry took to the airwaves yesterday to denounce the attacks on Barack Obama, calling the former President's rhetoric an "abuse of the truth".
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