For the sake of political health of this nation and the long term economic health of the world, I wish this market crashes just enough for the world to completely ridicule Bill Clinton's "legacy." Man this sumbitch is one vicious bastard. -ng-
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The Payback Presidency
The New York Times reported on its front page Thursday that the President is "furious" at House Republicans for impeaching him and is planning to retake the House with an "all-out offensive to knock out many of his foes."
Meanwhile various Senators, purporting to be morally torn by it all, have been saying they'll vote to acquit because whatever we know about Bill Clinton, it doesn't affect his ability to govern. This whole Clinton thing is irrelevant to being President of the United States, we are assured. It's just about sex, it's just about lying as a way of life and now, it seems, it's just about revenge. Bill Clinton is beginning to sound like something out of a Mario Puzo novel.
The White House spent Thursday trying to knock down reports of Mr. Clinton's plans to wipe out his enemies. But in recent days he'd made his plans clear to so many Democrats that the story was being circulated all over Washington. Retribution serves Mr. Clinton's political interest because his goal with so little time left is to rescue his reputation for history. That means delegitimizing the House impeachment vote, getting Hollywood capos like Barry Diller to spend millions to drive James Rogan and Asa Hutchinson out of public life, and returning control of the House to Dick Gephardt, who graciously bowed to Mr. Clinton's desire to turn over the Oval Office to Al Gore, the one associate who never crossed him.
The political conceit of witless Republicans now is that impeachment makes Mr. Clinton even more eager for a big, bipartisan Social Security fix. Now more than ever, they think, he needs a legislative achievement for his legacy. That's what Newt Gingrich thought in 1995, too. If the Washington Republicans don't wake up and smell the gunpowder, they are headed for extinction. If they fail to stand up for what they've done on impeachment, the Clinton machine will simply roll over them.
Mr. Clinton's favorite cat's paw, James Carville, said recently, "I'm not on the forgive-and-forget battalion." Nor is the First Couple, who last year eliminated North Carolina Senator Lauch Faircloth, one of their fiercest Whitewater critics. They all but handpicked his opponent, dispatched campaign help and used the Senator's repair of the District of Columbia's mismanaged home rule to demagogue the black vote. GOP opponents who got smeared by the Clinton battalion include Bob Livingston, Henry Hyde, Bob Barr and Dan Burton.
We have argued here that if you conduct your life in politics at such a pitch of aggression and recklessness, there is always another shoe ready to drop somewhere. We stand on the eve of the historic trial vote in the Senate, and shoes drop even now. The impolitic revenge shoe is one. Now news reports are circulating as well of a White House taping shoe.
The Arizona Republic has just reported Senator John Kyl's revelation that U.S. intelligence agencies taped White House phone calls central to the Lewinsky investigation, and that the Senate has passed the tip from bureaucratic insiders along to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. The paper said Senator Kyl, a GOP member of the select committee on intelligence, said the calls were relevant to the investigation, "in particular diverging memories about details of events in the testimony of Lewinsky and presidential friend Vernon Jordan." And that the Senator "compared the allegations of the tapes' existence to the 'smoking gun' evidence in the Watergate scandal."
The White House said this week that no such taping system exists. It said Thursday that reports of a revenge strategy are false. After the Senate's Democrats unite to acquit him of everything later today, Mr. Clinton will utter words of reconciliation. This will of course be one more lie.
When has Bill Clinton treated any aspect of political life as anything other than an opportunity to bring down his Republican enemies? He has always thought of his legacy more in terms of politics than of policy. The Times story Thursday reported he has already lined up fund-raising trips to nine cities "to amass a war chest." It would almost be refreshing if the President said what's in his heart: "Let the bloodletting begin."
The Republican Party has got to start thinking about how to protect itself; trying to appease the polls or this President isn't self-protection; it is self-destruction. Silence on impeachment, trying to "put it behind us," will leave the Clinton offensive unopposed and concede the field. The President will be looking not merely to win for his party, but to vindicate his own actions by delegitimizing the impeachment on the hustings. By the end of Friday's voting, we'll know how many Republicans signed their names to Bill Clinton's hunting license |
