Ya gotta love this! My apologies if it was posted previously.
townhall.com
Ann Coulter (archive)
(printer-friendly version)
January 4, 2001
Liberal pimps for Clintonism
President Bill Clinton was recently
voted the second most popular
politician in Russia, edged out by
former KGB agent and Russian
president Vladimir Putin. But the American
entry was tied for second place with
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov,
who still pines for totalitarianism. (By sheer
coincidence, Clinton also came in second in
last year's "Most Evil Person of the
Millennium" poll in the New York Post,
narrowly bested by Adolf Hitler.)
This makes Clinton only slightly less popular
in Russia than among this country's media
elite. The media's wildly counterfactual
insistence that Clinton is the most popular
man since John Lennon merits investigation.
Whenever a Democrat loses, the
mainstream media invariably start spouting
bizarre theories about why the election really
turned on something other than the
unpopularity of Democratic ideas: The
candidate was an imperfect messenger for
the happy, upbeat message of socialism,
class warfare and atheism; or the
Republican candidate had some
supernatural capacity to entrance gullible
voters; or the American people have lost
their minds and are throwing a temper
tantrum by rejecting the idea of behemoth
government.
But this time the left doesn't even need any fancy theories. There's a
perfectly good excuse for an incumbent vice president to become a
historical first by losing a presidential election during peacetime in
the midst of a booming economy: It was sitting with its legs spread
on the cover of Esquire magazine a couple months ago. It was the
first elected president ever impeached, to say nothing of being the
first president to have his capacity to sexually arouse an intern
described in unseemly detail to Barbara Walters on national TV.
So you might think the left would jump on Clinton, an impeached,
dishonored president, as the explanation of why Gore lost an
election that the economy indicated should have been his in a
cakewalk.
But they haven't. The left loves Clinton and the worst he stands for
even more than they love high taxes and failed government
programs. It is now accepted as hard fact by the press that Gore
made a fatal error in not making Clinton front and center of his
campaign.
Without irony (or evidence), New York Times columnist Maureen
Dowd called Clinton "the most popular and articulate leader in the
world." (But see the American people when they're allowed to cast
their own votes.) Dowd conjured up a pop-up bubble over Clinton's
head during the presidential debates, with Clinton thinking: "Give
me a shot at Bush. I can take him."
In another peevish explanation for Al Gore's impending loss just
before Election Day, Joan Didion explained in the New York Review
of Books that "the Democrats have fallen into the same 'fatal eddy'
that the Republicans did in '98 -- buying into the Washington
establishment's still completely unproven conviction that you can win
elections running as moral paragons against Bill Clinton's sins."
The only "still unproven conviction" here is the lunatic delusion that
the "American people" adored Bill Clinton -- and adored him most
of all for his "sins."
It is somewhat easier to spout out about the convictions of the 280
million-odd "American people" when there is no conceivable
method of testing the theory. If we didn't have presidential elections
every four years to provide some hard data, the media would be
contending that the opinions of the "American people" hover in the
range of Barbra Streisand's political views.
One ideal method of testing the Didion theory would posit two
Democratic candidates, both linked with Clinton, both running for
public office and both -- for control purposes -- the same election
year, in the same state. One candidate would allow Clinton to
campaign for her, and the other would do everything in his power to
disassociate himself from the president.
As luck would have it, that's exactly what happened in New York
state this year. Hapless, wooden Al Gore -- who lost in America --
wouldn't let President Clinton near him throughout the campaign and
won New York state handily. (Of all the states Hillary has never lived
in, there's a reason she choose New York to run for office.)
Meanwhile, Hillary brought in Mr. Popularity to campaign for her and
she won narrowly against a political unknown. A lot of split votes out
there. If Clinton is such a beloved icon, how come Hillary was almost
walloped in New York, while Al took it in a walk?
Gore got more votes than Bill Clinton ever did, and he lost
Arkansas, Mr. Popularity's home state.
It is really rather amazing that when the left is given a choice of
attributing Al Gore's historic loss either to the unpopularity of
Democratic ideas or to a pervert like Bill Clinton, it's Clinton they
decide to save. If liberals aren't on Larry Flynt's payroll, they're being
cheated.
TG |
