Purdum Pulls The Trigger

The latest on Bill “my office is in Harlem” Clinton’s adventures is served up in Vanity Fair‘s July issue by the magazine’s own star map of Washington, Todd Purdum.

It’s a delightful medley of old scandal and new.

Reviewing Clinton pants-down matters, Purdum reports on “… recent high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip that Clinton has been seen visiting with the actress Gina Gershon in California,” but Gawker had this almost six months ago.

Purdum does better provoking post presidential spokesman Jay Carson on Clinton pal and billionaire boys club headmaster Ron Burkle. Carson reveals a longing for the opposition’s Fuhrer Principle:

“The ills of the Democratic Party can be seen perfectly in the willingness of fellow Democrats to say bad things about President Clinton. If you ask any Republican about Reagan they will say he still makes the sun rise in the morning, but if you ask Democrats about their only two-term president in 80 years, a man who took the party from the wilderness of loserdom to the White House and created the strongest economy in American history, they’d rather be quoted saying what a reporter wants to hear than protect a strong brand for the party. Republicans look at this behavior and laugh at us.”

A thorough reading of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal leads Purdum to conclude Clinton is asking for bad press.

“But it is also beyond dispute that Clinton has blended the altruistic efforts of his philanthropy with the private business interests of some of his biggest donors in ways that are surpassingly sloppy, if not unseemly, for any former president.”

Purdum’s catchall excuse for differentiating Clinton from the cash which flowed to former president’s Reagan, Bush, and Ford is that “their wives never ran for president,” as though Clinton coverage only started with Hillary’s run. The current White House occupant goes unmentioned, along with Barbara Bush using the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund as a pass-through to troubled son Neil.

Mama Tried

Fauxing It In

The George W. Bush Library-To-Be’s failure to secure likely website names has been the subject of speculation over future confusion. The future is now here.

The anti-Bushite at theruminationsofoldnfeeble has confused georgewbush.org with the real deal, and is suitably outraged.

“There he is. In all his finest, chest-puffing commander-in-chief regalia. Can you believe it? The one image you’d think they’d bury in the basement. The image that captures that “Mission Accomplished” moment from this endless, senseless, insane war Bush has drug this country into.

Is there ANY end to the unmitigated gall of this egomaniac and his cohorts?”

Bush Insider Tells All!

Scott McClellan has revealed shocking details of the Bush White House: apparently they function in “permanent political campaign” mode.

Favorite Fun Fact Presented In Sentence of Unrelated Parts:

“McClellan describes Bush as able to convince himself of his own spin and relates a phone call he overheard Bush having during the 2000 campaign, in which he said he could not remember whether he had used cocaine. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘How can that be?’ ” he writes.”

Only Interactivity Can Save Them!

Southern Methodist University Bush Library opponents have two months to block the future home of freedom in exile.

There’s no time to waste.

They don’t seem to have solved their wobbly supporter problem, but faith in the power to cloud men’s minds sustains them.

All the modern conveniences will be deployed. Yes, even faxes!

“The campaign will entail an intensive public relations effort incorporating print, internet, fax, radio, TV and advertising.”

The real trick up their collective sleeve will be the power of the nets, as they pledge themselves to:

” designing and uploading a high-quality website with blog and interactive capability.”

These mighty tasks have been entrusted to the dynamos at P&S Associates of Maine LLC, run by yet another Methodist clergyman. This is the team responsible for the “Impeach Bush for Peace” website, which incorporates all the bells and whistles planned for the blog that will block Bush.

I think that thing in the corner is a peach. Gaze upon the future!

Would That It Were So

George W. Bush’s pet National Archivist Allen Weinstein brought a message of hope to the dreamed of future home of Bush’s Presidential Library , and offered proof of just how differential to power he is.

Weinstein assured the Southern Methodist University commencement crowd that the Bush Library will gussy up SMU’s image, even the Fantastic Freedom Institute., once that darn popularity gets turned around.

“Even most opponents of the proposed independent Bush Policy Institute acknowledge that a popular, well-run presidential library center will redound to the benefit of SMU.“

The man who has watched the Bush administration lose millions of presidential documents with no apparent response is unsurprisingly calm about the prospect that Bush will bury his past in the vaults.

The secret is showing your sensitive side.

Weinstein claims that Lyndon Johnson’s image is on the upswing because the Johnson Library released tapes of him agonizing over Vietnam.

“This is the kind of gamble other presidential families will be more likely to try now, and perhaps be less fearful about.”

But thanks to Richard Nixon this isn’t supposed to a decision by “presidential families.” The documents belong to the public, and the families would have no role if the courts or Congress overturned George W. Bush’s executive order letting ex presidents and their children after them hide papers.