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.”
One reason for the Republican candidate competition to out Ronnie one another is that President Reagan didn’t leave as public a paper trail as Richard Nixon.
ABC’s hard hitting investigative reporter Brian Ross illustrates the point today with a straight from his Bat Phone report. It’s the latest version of what is becoming a beloved classic: Richard Nixon dumping on young Fred Thompson.
The old war horse saying Thompson “isn’t very smart…But he’s friendly” never loses it’s charm. It also isn’t terribly new.
The New York Timeshad all the quotes in August, and a not very comprehensive Google search finds 1997 Wall Street Journal mentions from the last big Nixon tape dump.
Ross does provide a public service by putting a tape excerpt on the ABC News site
The artist tries to assure us he has no point of view. “I can’t take a position politically…My position is to draw attention to the issue and the candidates . . . and definitely not take it too seriously.”
Hats off to the Clinton Library for joining with the other Presidential Libraries by dumping this drek, for whatever motives.
Taste is not assured however. We will always be haunted by their ghastlytaste in music.
The LA Times reports that many of those panting for Hillary Clinton documents from the Clinton Library will remain breathless for a considerable time.
This is presented as something of a novelty. And the other girls make Hillary look bad:
“About 75,000 pages of Rosalynn Carter’s records are publicly available, including scheduling and social office files. Both the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush libraries also said that some records covering former first ladies Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush were open”
The article does portray Library archivists working through the mountain of FOIA requests in the order received, with the aching slowness of the process attributed to staff shortages at the Clinton and all US President’s libraries.
No end of woe as Springfield Illinois lumbers from loss to loss. Fewer tourists are visiting the home of the Abraham Lincoln Library and other, actual Lincoln sites, in a year when Chicago and downstate Illinois as a whole are up.
Hopes of turning it around may rest on a tourist guide where children can collect stamps from all the local sites, from the Museum of Funeral Customs [motto: “Death is Only the Beginning!”] to The Edwards Place, home of the Lincoln Courting Couch. Scattered early reports in the Springfield Journal Register have “a handful” or “two or three a day” tourists visiting sites bearing the guides, with 20,000 on the streets.
Citizens of Springfield! You can’t get a break.
The latest indignity to befall the Land of Lincoln is it’s snubbing by the producers of The Simpsons Movie, who held a bake-off of the nation’s Springfields to decide where to premiere the film next week.
Illinois’s effort was brightened by referencing the classic episode where Groundskeeper Willie doused the eternal flame on Adlai Stevenson’s grave.
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.
and whether Al Gore or Hillary Clinton would be credited with denouncing this scourge.
Gore appeared on Oprah to lament kids today, while Bush kept his eye on the ball campaigning. In Florida.
