No, Bush-Cheney are very ruthless. The Clintons are a lot less ruthless. Hillary is not powerful enough to be ruthless. She's still in the midst of trying to mend her image to mainstream America. Bill is very powerful but not a bully and has no direct control over anything. He only jumps in when he sees things going in the wrong direction.
He DID give Clark a big push, but only after Edwards and Graham failed. He wants to nab a few southern states for Democrats. That could be the difference. Therefore he doesn't want Dean in. But Clinton is not alone, not a monolith, there are a great many Democrats including everyone around Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards, Ford, Feinstein, etc who agree with Clinton. He doesn't rule them, they just agree the party needs to be more centrist to win in 2004.
Dick Morris is obsessed with the Clintons and the GOP is trying to drum up anti-CLintonism to try and excite the base right-wing who they re in danger of losing as you see in recent polls. This CLinton obsession has nothing to do with the truth, it's just a ploy. And it's a silly ploy. Morris wrote a book about the Clintons, throwing mud at them, and is trying to sell that book. So the CLintons are all he ever talks about. But in the process he totally exaggerates things.
That said, Bill Clinton is a powerful man as well he should be. If he could run again he'd win handily over Bush. But power/influence and control are two different things. And ruthlessness is something the Bush administration has raised to new heights, as we see in the outing of the CIA agent out of revenge to scare other agents never to go public with the true facts.
Clinton scares the GOP still, but they also use him as a lightning rod to excite the right-wing base. It's all about jealousy. They want to destroy his memory and legacy, so people wont remember he gave us the best economy of all time. |
