Bill Clinton's Quest for Relevancy : buddy owner/master
Phil Brennan
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Title: "The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House"
Author: Robert Tyrrell Jr.
Publisher: Thomas Nelson, Inc.
A dark side to the post-presidency of Bill Clinton emerges in R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.'s latest buzzworthy book. Beyond the lucrative lectures and glamorous globetrotting is a man who is compared to a "ghost ship" - a tortured soul in physical decline who desperately seeks to stay relevant without upstaging his wife's presidential campaign.
Bill's deep-rooted flaws, Tyrrell contends in his latest book, "The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House," render him equally prone to squandering his potential as an elder statesman as he did his political career.
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Tyrrell is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, and a longtime observer and author on the scandals of Bill and Hillary Clinton. His investigative reporting highlighted Clinton's womanizing as well as the couple's involvement in the shady Whitewater land deal.
In an exclusive interview with NewsMax, Tyrrell reveals Clinton's lifestyle as a "rogue," his celebrity status overseas, and the curious "chop suey connection" with Communist China that still threatens U.S. security as it makes the Clintons rich.
NewsMax: Was one of the things that provoked you to write this book the ascendance of Hillary to perceived front-runner status for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination?
Tyrrell: It was mainly the fact that I understand, as apparently a lot of writers don't, there's something odd about the 1980s generation, and that the Clintons represent the enduring amorality of that generation.
I was told in 2000 or 2001 that the Clintons were history and I said ‘How can that be? The 1960s generation faces two great elections ahead before they are history': that's the ‘04 election and the ‘08 election and I guess I've been vindicated because the Clintons are up and dominant in the Democratic Party.
NewsMax: You paint a picture of a thoroughly despicable human being in describing Bill Clinton. Reading the first two chapters makes one feel as if he were in a cesspool. How accurate a depiction is that?
Tyrrell: When I got to covering him in retirement - and as you can see I've had terrific sources, secret service agents, military aides, people close to the Clinton family - I saw him more vividly than I ever did see him during his presidency because the trappings of the presidency were no longer around to obscure the essential rogue that is Bill Clinton. Lax, lonely, reckless - a rogue. That's the cesspool you found yourself in.
NewsMax: As a political operator he's smart as he can be. Yet you reveal that he has failed miserably - that in campaigning for others he has no coattails.
Tyrrell: Most people in the media think he's a political genius. I cite a Washington Post writer as saying that the Clintons are the greatest politicians of their generation, forgetting Newt Gingrich of course, and George Bush.
If you look at the facts, they are bunglers. They are good for themselves, they've advanced themselves, but as they have advanced, the Democratic Party has weathered. In regard to Bill Clinton's coattails, when he campaigned in 2004 for something like 14 candidates only two of them won. In ‘06 he was a negligible quantity in every race he competed in. Most of these Democrats won, but in ‘06 most of the Democrats won all over the country.
NewsMax: In regard to his wife, are we going to see her ruthless, or Bruno, side or will that remain behind the scenes?
Tyrrell: We've already seen her Bruno side and I think the press is a little bit alarmed. The mainstream press goes through the cycles of great hope for the Clintons, then indignation over the Clinton scandals, to whatever scandal that might be, and then suddenly a great hope once again.
Yes, we're going to see the tough-guy stuff; We've already seen it in her furious assault on Barack Obama.
NewsMax: Given the Clinton modus operandi, do you expect that Hillary's people will go to work on Obama behind the scenes and he'll never know where it's coming from?
Tyrrell: Yes, it's already taking place. In the book I have explained how she has distinguished herself by using private investigators since the days in Arkansas and those private investigators didn't just dig up information which is legitimate but they intimidated, they roughed people up, and those are the kind of things Hillary is associated with.
The interesting thing about those people is they came out of the new left - the radical left - with her in the late '60s.
NewsMax: Most Democrat candidates today are essentially socialists, but Hillary embraces the fascist political philosophy - the mixed state pioneered by Benito Mussolini, doesn't she?
Tyrrell: I did compare her to Mussolini in the book. At least she has nicer hair.
NewsMax: You write about Bill's inability to make a difference - he operates behind the scenes and you never know whose side he's on. That was obvious during the primary in 2004 where each candidate thought he was backing them.
Tyrrell: He's a little bit like Franklin Roosevelt in the 1944 election when Roosevelt had everyone hoodwinked as to who he was supporting as his vice president. Bill in '04 had everyone hoodwinked as to who he was supporting for the presidency. From Howard Dean on they all thought that they had Bill's ear - they had his ear but they didn't have his support. He originally supported Edwards and then supported Wes Clark to knock off Dean - they really were fearful of Howard Dean.
NewsMax: One of the most shocking revelations in your book is what you call the "chop suey connection" - you demonstrate what amounts to criminality in the Clinton China connection. Yet he was allowed to go scot-free.
Tyrrell: He probably should have been impeached, if for no other reason than for campaign contribution irregularities in '96, particularly with the Red Chinese. He took money from the Chinese military to get re-elected president of the United States.
In compensation for that he turned around and relaxed technology bans that allowed technology transfers to the Chinese that strengthened their military and that allowed them to sell some of the technology to Pakistan and Iran which made the world an even more dangerous place.
Then in retirement he's been enriched handsomely by the Chinese in speaking fees all over the world. In the back of the book I have an appendix that shows his speaking venues since his retirement and the enormous amounts of money he's made. In one day in Hong Kong he made half a million dollars in two $250,000 speeches.
NewsMax: Why is he so popular overseas?
Tyrrell: As I point out in a book he has become a celebrity. And he's become a celebrity as many celebrities become in America these days, because of his wrongdoing. He's kind of on a par with Anna Nicole Smith.
NewsMax: Why didn't the Bushes pursue him for his wrongdoing after he left the White House?
Tyrrell: George H.W. Bush is a very nice man and he had no imagination when it came to the Clintons and he didn't understand that the next generation behind him, the 1960s generation, was as amoral as it is. He still doesn't. I can't explain his son's neglect of the Clintons except that his son is a gentleman and not the fierce politician he's made out to be.
One of the things I hope I've made clear is the book is based on facts and the facts make it very clear that Bill Clinton and his wife are a couple of rogues. A lot of people aren't familiar with those facts. And that's why I had a lot of fun writing the book but also provided a public service in revealing the facts of what rogues these people have been during Bill Clinton's retirement.
NewsMax: It appears that Barack Obama is a creature of the media which indicates that a segment of the media has become anti-Hillary.
Tyrrell: When I talk about her prospects for becoming president in the book I said that she is no shoo-in because there is a rising younger generation in the Democratic Party and in the liberal culture that's had enough of these people. They think it's now their day and that the day of the 1960 coat-and-tie radical is over, and I think that is going to add a great deal of drama to this race.
NewsMax: Does this new generation fall into the Obama camp?
Tyrrell: It looks like they do; it looks like they're lining up behind him.
NewsMax: Do you think she has what she thinks she has: the women's vote?
Tyrrell: No. The more women find out that she was an enabler and that she enabled Clinton - in the book I show how she covered for Clinton, she had her own intelligence operation in the White House keeping her informed of the president's harem - once that information is out that is certainly not going to help her with the women's vote.
NewsMax: Didn't she know about Monica from day one? You write that Evelyn Lieberman, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, kept her informed of Bill's affair with Monica and his other peccadilloes.
Tyrrell: I think I made that clear in the book. |
