Gore V. Clinton
Vanity Fair‘s “White House Civil War” account of Gore-Clinton spats and slights recalls those heady days when nothing seemed impossible, the President spoke in coherent sentences, and the White House was mired in minutia. When school uniforms walked like men, and V-chips promised to end filth as we knew it.
The piece excerpts from Salley Bedell Smith’s “For Love of Politics—Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years,” following the resource competition between Gore and Hillary Clinton’s 2000 campaigns for President and Senator.
Apparently the fate of the Republic turned on the teen marketing of “Resident Evil,” 
and whether Al Gore or Hillary Clinton would be credited with denouncing this scourge.
“One of the most dramatic examples occurred in September as the Federal Trade Commission prepared to release a report on violence in the media. The agency’s million-dollar study showed that entertainment companies were marketing violent movies, video games, and music to children under 18. Under ordinary circumstances, a vice president running for the presidency would have first call on publicizing the report. But Hillary insisted she should handle the rollout because she had already called for a universal ratings system. “It was a key point of her Senate campaign,” said Bruce Reed. “The president had singled her out for that in the 2000 State of the Union, so the finding of the F.T.C. was directly relevant to her campaign. The vice president’s campaign had concluded that cultural issues were hurting him, and they were dying to announce the report as well.”
An alternative reading of events might be that the September 11, 2000 [did the Mossad do this one too?] FTC release was a side show. 
Gore appeared on Oprah to lament kids today, while Bush kept his eye on the ball campaigning. In Florida.
In other news, the article confirms the status of former Clinton and Gore staffer Bob Boorstin as a national resource. His “I find her to be among the most self-righteous people I’ve ever known in my life” quote on Hillary to Carl Bernstein got a lot of play, and in the Vanity Fair piece he tops himself:
“Did we make mistakes? Yes. Would I say that Clinton was the only reason we lost? No. Would I say with absolute zero doubt in my mind that we would have won the election if Clinton hadn’t put his penis in [Lewinsky’s] mouth? Yes. I guarantee it.”
