Title: More Billary v. Gore
AlGoreFan - January 27, 2008 09:01 AM (GMT)
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| Hillary on ticket, but Bill running By Randy Schultz, Palm Beach Post Editorial Page Editor Sunday, January 27, 2008 There is no mystery about why Bill Clinton has gone from big dog to attack dog in his wife's campaign. He's not just campaigning for her. He's campaigning for him. To put his wife in the White House would be a one-finger salute to the people who wanted to remove him from office. Mr. Clinton's thinking probably goes something like this: "If I could have run again in 2000, I would have won, despite all that my enemies did to me, despite all that stuff they threw at me - not just in the second term but the whole eight years. All that stuff about Vincent Foster being murdered and not committing suicide, even though every investigation showed that he did. All that stuff about the women. Day after day after day. "And still, my approval rating never got below 55 percent in my second term. When I left office, two years after the Senate came 12 votes short of convicting me on the impeachment charge, my rating was nearly 70 percent. As soon as Hillary was elected to the Senate in 2000, we targeted 2008. And nobody is going to stand in my, um, her, way." So, once again, it's all about him. Undone by a personality flaw Like Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton was a president undone by a personality flaw. Mr. Nixon was a good strategic thinker who also happened to be obsessively secretive and paranoid, traits that led to the Watergate burglary and resignation. Mr. Clinton is a terrific thinker and a far more captivating politician than Mr. Nixon, but his self-indulgence led to Monica Lewinsky and impeachment. Even today, I'd bet that Mr. Clinton assigns himself no blame for Al Gore's failure to become president. Mr. Gore didn't run the best campaign, and he's hardly the speaker Mr. Clinton is, but he didn't know whether to run on the Clinton-Gore record or away from it. Mr. Clinton put him in that tough position. Yet Mr. Gore won the popular vote. Al Gore also lost 10 states - including Ohio and, of course, Florida - that Bill Clinton and he carried in 1996. Let's stipulate that he lost West Virginia because George Bush campaigned on coal, and there was Mr. Gore with his support for the coal-hostile Kyoto agreement on global warming. And let's just take Florida out of the debate, hard as that is because of what happened. Then let's theorize what Bill Clinton doesn't want to theorize: One reason that Al Gore lost those other eight states - any one of which would have made him president - is that while swing voters might not have wanted Bill Clinton impeached and convicted, some of those voters also didn't much like what he did. He risks a repeat of 2000 The inconvenient truth Bill Clinton might not want to face is that he made the 2000 election close enough for Theresa LePore's ballot to matter. The first Democrat since Roosevelt to win back-to-back presidential elections enabled a Republican to succeed him because he took a second look at a 25-year-old intern, and thus gave a special prosecutor who was all out of options one last chance. Which brings us back to Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton's more-than-spousal desire to get her elected. Last week, I caught a clip of the ex-president berating reporters for supposedly buying into a Barack Obama race-angle ploy in the Obama-vs-Clinton/Clinton campaign. "This is almost like once you accuse someone of racism and bigotry, the facts become irrelevant," Mr. Clinton lectured. "Not one single solitary citizen asked about any of this and they never do. (Sen. Obama's people) are feeding you this because they know this is what you want to cover, this is what you live for, but this hurts the people of South Carolina. What they care about is not going to be in the newspapers tonight because you don't care about it. What you care about is this, and the Obama people know it, and they just spin you up on this and you happily go along." In fact, Bill Clinton is miffed because the man called "the first black president" stands accused of using race to keep someone who really would be the first black president from getting the nomination. Apparently, Sen. Obama was supposed to oblige the non-black first black president by letting his wife win. Mr. Clinton has made Sen. Obama look more like the "black candidate" he never set out to be. He is further dividing black and Latino voters whom any Democrat will need. He has made people wonder if they really do want a Clinton/Clinton presidency. Bill Clinton already has helped to keep one Democrat out of the White House. Eight years later, will the second one be his wife? |
ReElectAlGore2008 - January 27, 2008 03:44 PM (GMT)
Time to get rid of the Clinton's and Bush's from the White House forever more
America, isn't it time for a change? (Just on that fact alone, 28 years is too many).
America, isn't it time for a change? (Just on that fact alone, 28 years is too many).
trueconservative - January 27, 2008 08:02 PM (GMT)
If not Clinton then whom do you suggest?
