Digging deep
Chris Wallace is shaking things up at Fox News Sunday, launching a cutting edge new interview series called “American Leaders.”
Let Chris explain:
“we want to expand the conversation on Sunday talk shows to reach beyond the Beltway and hear from some of the most compelling voices in business, culture and religion.”
But they could get George Bush [41].
Reaching all the way to College Station, Texas, where the senior President Bush is flogging the triumphant reopening of his Presidential Library.
A sampling of the Wallace fact seeking juggernaut in action:
“Where do you and your family — where did you get this commitment to public service?”
“And as grandpa or poppy — what are you?“
“Volunteerism has had quite some staying power in the last 20 years, hasn’t it?“
Great to see the hard hitting style he showed in his Nancy Reagan take-down hasn’t dulled.
Bill says back off
The fine details escape me and most Americans, but Bill Clinton does have a point when he denounces press and rival campaign accusations that he and the Mrs. are withholding papers.
As he says, and is true, he has released more and faster than his predecessors . And the mechanics of this are convoluted even if all parties pulled as one.
For example, Judicial Watch has gotten endless press over it’s requests for Clinton papers and dark mutterings that the Clinton fix is in. Turns out the Associated Press discovered that the Archives hasn’t even processed Judicial Watch’s request yet. Clinton’s minions have yet to touch it.
The fine details of Clinton’s Archives letter matter, and I doubt he wants to help his enemies, but on the broader front he is correct and his critics ignore the history of the law and past Presidential Libraries.
Say he let it rip as the Washington Post recently proposed, releasing everything without review. And in this mythical world President Bush quickly signed off on everything, and the National Archives had staff to shovel it all through. Let’s write the headlines:
“Let’s Do Lani Guinier’s Taxes!”
“Publicly Close, Clinton wrote Infrequently to Mother”
“They Believed In Bill, Now Failed Clinton Nominees Privacy Exposed”
It’s an issue, and a headache for Candidate Clinton, but the pretense that there is a snappy solution to this is getting tiresome.
I
Howdy!
The Washington Post “Fact Checker” weighs in on the Clinton’s papers, and comes up with a simple pointless solution that will never see the light of day.
She says she’s for disclosure, he blamed the Bush White House, the Archives says President Clinton’s representatives have a blanket list of topics they don’t want out till they see the papers first. A Bush Executive Order gave this power to ex president’s and their children after them just as Reagan era papers were about to surface. 
With the sitting president getting yet another whack at preventing disclosure afterwards.
The Post says Clinton should let it all hang out:
‘There is, however, nothing in Executive Order 13233 that obliges a former president, or his representative, to go through the records one by one. If former President Clinton is so opposed to the Bush administration order, he could simply instruct Lindsey to approve the documents wholesale.”
Brilliant. Perhaps the Clinton’s have wandered into a trap Bush devised, perhaps their intentions are impure. But as is often said in political money arguments, why should they unilaterally disarm? We’ve decades to go before we’ll see the Reagan and Bush 1 documents in full.
Absent a real law not twisted into it’s reverse by crackpot Executive Orders our knowledge of past administrations will be based more on contemporary leaks and fatuous memoirs.
DeFrank Talk
Reaction to Tom DeFrank’s Gerald Ford tell-all “Write It When I’m Gone” shows an interesting split.
When Ford reinforces conventional wisdom it’s shouted from the rafters:
Rudy: strong. Bill: can’t keep it in his pants.Hillary: pushy dame.
But when Ford speaks ill of the dead turned plaster saint, not so much:
“A superficial, disengaged, intellectually-lazy showman who didn’t do his homework and clung to a naive, unrealistic, and essentially dangerous worldview. Foreign leaders have said they were appalled by Reagan’s lack of knowledge of the issues.”
How can they miss him when he won’t go away?
McClatchy Newspapers’ William Douglas reports on the Bush countdown clock industry, all manner of paraphernalia celebrating the eventual passage of time and power. No actual stats to stack up to the Hillary Hatin’ merchandise, but the Bush clocks are “hot.”
Reaching all the way to College Station, Texas, where the senior President Bush is flogging the triumphant reopening of his Presidential Library.
