[Dialogue] My final posting on the Clintons

[KroegerD at aol.com]

I am very afraid of a Romney or McCain presidency.  It used to be you  could 
count on the congress but those days are over, as the stimulus package  again 
proves. With Republicans, the Unitary presidency is in  place. 
A Clinton presidency WILL NOT Happen!  
Count on it.
 
 
Published on Sunday, January  27, 2008 by _The New York Times_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin)   
The Billary Road to Republican Victory
by Frank Rich

 
In the wake of George W. Bush, even a miracle might not be enough for the  
Republicans to hold on to the White House in 2008. But what about two miracles?  
The new year’s twin resurrections of Bill Clinton and John McCain, should 
they  not evaporate, at last give the G.O.P. a highly plausible route to victory. 
Amazingly, neither party seems to fully recognize the contours of the road  
map. In the Democrats’ case, the full-throttle emergence of Billary, the joint  
Clinton candidacy, is measured mainly within the narrow confines of the  
short-term horse race: Do Bill Clinton’s red-faced eruptions and fact-challenged  
rants enhance or diminish his wife as a woman and a candidate? 
Absent from this debate is any sober recognition that a Hillary Clinton  
nomination, if it happens, will send the Democrats into the general election  with 
a new and huge peril that may well dwarf the current wars over race, gender  
and who said what about Ronald Reagan. 
What has gone unspoken is this: Up until this moment, Hillary has  
successfully deflected rough questions about Bill by saying, “I’m running on my  own” 
or, as she snapped at Barack Obama in the last debate, “Well, I’m here;  he’s 
not.” This sleight of hand became officially inoperative once her husband  
became a co-candidate, even to the point of taking over entirely when she  
vacated South Carolina last week. With “two for the price of one” back as the  
unabashed modus operandi, both Clintons are in play. 
For the Republicans, that means not just a double dose of the one steroid,  
Clinton hatred, that might yet restore their party’s unity but also two fat  
targets. Mrs. Clinton repeatedly talks of how she’s been “vetted” and that  “
there are no surprises” left to be mined by her opponents. On the “Today” show 
 Friday, she joked that the Republican attacks “are just so old.” So far. 
Now  that Mr. Clinton is ubiquitous, not only is his past back on the table but 
his  post-presidency must be vetted as well. To get a taste of what surprises 
may be  in store, you need merely revisit the Bill Clinton questions that 
Hillary  Clinton has avoided to date. 
Asked by Tim Russert at a September debate whether the Clinton presidential  
library and foundation would disclose the identities of its donors during the  
campaign, Mrs. Clinton said it wasn’t up to her. “What’s your recommendation?
”  Mr. Russert countered. Mrs. Clinton replied: “Well, I don’t talk about my 
 private conversations with my husband, but I’m sure he’d be happy to 
consider  that.” 
Not so happy, as it turns out. The names still have not been made public. 
Just before the holidays, investigative reporters at both The Washington Post 
 and The New York Times tried to find out why, with no help from the 
Clintons.  The Post uncovered a plethora of foreign contributors, led by Saudi Arabia. 
The  Times found an overlap between library benefactors and Hillary Clinton 
campaign  donors, some of whom might have an agenda with a new Clinton 
administration.  (Much as one early library supporter, Marc Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, 
had an agenda  with the last one.) “The vast scale of these secret fund-raising 
operations  presents enormous opportunities for abuse,” said Representative 
Henry Waxman,  the California Democrat whose legislation to force disclosure 
passed  overwhelmingly in the House but remains stalled in the Senate. 
The Post and Times reporters couldn’t unlock all the secrets. The unanswered  
questions could keep them and their competitors busy until Nov. 4. Mr. Clinton
’s  increased centrality to the campaign will also give The Wall Street 
Journal a  greater news peg to continue its reportorial forays into the unraveling  
financial partnership between Mr. Clinton and the swashbuckling billionaire 
Ron  Burkle. 
At “Little Rock’s Fort Knox,” as the Clinton library has been nicknamed by  
frustrated researchers, it’s not merely the heavy-hitting contributors who are 
 under wraps. Even by the glacial processing standards of the National 
Archives,  the Clintons’ White House papers have emerged slowly, in part because 
Bill  Clinton exercised his right to insist that all communications between him 
and  his wife be “considered for withholding” until 2012. 
When Mrs. Clinton was asked by Mr. Russert at an October debate if she would  
lift that restriction, she again escaped by passing the buck to her husband:  
“Well, that’s not my decision to make.” Well, if her candidacy is to be as  
completely vetted as she guarantees, the time for the other half of Billary to 
 make that decision is here. 
The credibility of a major Clinton campaign plank, health care, depends on  
it. In that same debate, Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Russert that “all of the 
records,  as far as I know, about what we did with health care” are “already 
available.”  As Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reported weeks later, this is a bit off; 
he found  that 3,022,030 health care documents were still held hostage. 
Whatever the pace  of the processing, the gatekeeper charged with approving each 
document’s release  is the longtime Clinton loyalist Bruce Lindsey. 
People don’t change. Bill Clinton, having always lived on the edge, is back  
on the precipice. When he repeatedly complains that the press has given Mr.  
Obama a free ride and over-investigated the Clintons, he seems to be tempting  
the fates, given all the reporting still to be done on his post-presidential  
business. When he says, as he did on Monday, that “whatever I do should be  
totally transparent,” it’s almost as if he’s setting himself up for a fall.  
There’s little more transparency at “Little Rock’s Fort Knox” than there is at 
 Giuliani Partners. 
“The Republicans are not going to have any compunctions about asking anybody  
anything,” Mrs. Clinton lectured Mr. Obama. Maybe so, but Republicans are 
smart  enough not to start asking until after she has secured the nomination. 
Not all Republicans are smart enough, however, to recognize the value of John 
 McCain should Mrs. Clinton emerge as the nominee. He’s a bazooka aimed at 
most  every rationale she’s offered for her candidacy. 
In a McCain vs. Billary race, the Democrats will sacrifice the most highly  
desired commodity by the entire electorate, change; the party will be mired in  
déjà 1990s all over again. Mrs. Clinton’s spiel about being “tested” by her “
35  years of experience” won’t fly either. The moment she attempts it, Mr. 
McCain  will run an ad about how he was being tested when those 35 years began, 
in 1973.  It was that spring when he emerged from five-plus years of 
incarceration at the  Hanoi Hilton while Billary was still bivouacked at Yale Law 
School. And can Mrs.  Clinton presume to sell herself as best equipped to be 
commander in chief “on  Day One” when opposing an actual commander and war hero? I 
don’t think so. 
Foreign policy issue No. 1, withdrawal from Iraq, should be a slam-dunk for  
any Democrat. Even the audience at Thursday’s G.O.P. debate in Boca Raton  
cheered Ron Paul’s antiwar sentiments. But Mrs. Clinton’s case is undermined by  
her record. She voted for the war, just as Mr. McCain did, in 2002 and was 
still  defending it in February 2005, when she announced from the Green Zone 
that much  of Iraq was “functioning quite well. ” Only in November 2005 did she 
express the  serious misgivings long pervasive in her own party. When Mr. 
McCain accuses her  of now advocating “surrender” out of political expediency, 
her flip-flopping  will back him up. 
Billary can’t even run against the vast right-wing conspiracy if Mr. McCain  
is the opponent. Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay hate Mr. McCain as much as they  
hate the Clintons. And they hate him for the same reasons Mr. McCain wins over 
 independents and occasional Democrats: his sporadic (and often mild) 
departures  from conservative orthodoxy on immigration and campaign finance reform, 
torture,  tax cuts, climate change and the godliness of Pat Robertson. Since 
Mr. McCain  doesn’t kick reporters like dogs, as the Clintons do, he will no 
doubt continue  to enjoy an advantage, however unfair, with the press pack on the 
Straight Talk  Express. 
Even so, Mr. McCain hasn’t yet won a clear majority of Republican voters in  
any G.O.P. contest. He’s depended on the kindness of independent voters.  
Tuesday’s Florida primary, which is open exclusively to Republicans, is his  
crucial test. If he fails, his party remains in chaos and Mitt Romney could  still 
inherit the earth. 
That would be a miracle for the Democrats, but they can hardly count on it.  
If Mr. Obama has not met an unexpected Waterloo in South Carolina - this 
column  went to press before Saturday’s vote - the party needs him to stop whining 
about  the Clintons’ attacks, regain his wit and return to playing offense. 
Unlike Mrs.  Clinton, he would unambiguously represent change in a race with any 
Republican.  If he vanquishes Billary, he’ll have an even stronger argument 
to take into  battle against a warrior like Mr. McCain. 
If Mr. Obama doesn’t fight, no one else will. Few national Democratic leaders 
 have the courage to stand up to the Clintons. Even in defeat, Mr. Obama may 
at  least help wake up a party slipping into denial. Any Democrat who 
seriously  thinks that Bill will fade away if Hillary wins the nomination - let alone 
that  the Clintons will escape being fully vetted - is a Democrat who, as the 
man  said, believes in fairy tales. 
Frank Rich is a regular columnist for The New York Times. 
© 2008 The New York Timesac




**************Start the year off right.  Easy ways to stay in shape.     
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20080127/5938c7f9/attachment-0001.html