Huffington Post, March 31, 2011
The Public Will Blame the GOP for a Shutdown in 2011, Just As It Did in 1995
A tweet from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor the other day (March 28):
If @SenatorReid @ChuckSchumer force gov to partially shut down b/c they oppose sensible spending cuts, Americans will hold them accountable
Dream on, Congressman. Americans won't blame Democrats like Harry Reed and Chuck Schumer. They'll blame Republicans like you.
One day in August of 1995, Paul Begala went jogging with President Bill Clinton at Fort Myer, the military facility near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. "It was humid and hot," Begala recalled. "Both of us had gained a lot of weight during the campaign and both of us were losing it — we were proud of that, two fat boys trying to jog off the fat."
Begala, looking at the upcoming negotiations over the federal budget, spoke to Clinton of the attitude among Congressional Republicans: "Newt and those guys think they can roll you."
"They can't think that," the president responded.
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Huffington Post, February 23, 2011
President of the World? Legacy Hunting With Bill Clinton
Monday night, watching "President of the World," the Chris Matthews documentary on the post-presidency of Bill Clinton, one sensed a man in a race against time. One day Bill Clinton's in Northern Ireland, the next in Malawi, then it's off to Kosovo. He's sharing a stage with Bill Gates, he's holding hands with Nelson Mandela, he's wowing Mick Jagger. The adulatory film barely mentioned the underside to Clinton's globe-trotting, high-powered philanthropy: his globe-trotting, high-powered personal moneymaking. But even allowing for the time and effort he expends to feather his own nest, we should all be impressed by his post-presidential record of doing good.
Like so much about Bill Clinton, his energy is not that of an ordinary human being. Even so, his frenetic pace suggests that this man is trying to cram as much activity as he can into the remaining years of his life.
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Huffington Post, January 12, 2011
Lessons from Pastor Bill Clinton's Lessons from Oklahoma City for Pastor Barack Obama in Tucson
At a prime-time news conference on April 18, 1995, President Bill Clinton aroused both ridicule and pity when he stated, "The president is relevant." The comment seemed to encapsulate his weakened political position and what appeared to be his woeful state of mind as the new speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, dominated the news in the wake of Republican victories in the midterm elections just past.
But only hours later came the event that would prove to the nation that the president — this president — was, indeed, relevant.
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New York Post, October 31, 2010
Lessons from Bill: Clinton outfoxed a Republican Congress, but is Obama as nimble?
"I think he was stunned. He got the biggest spanking, probably, that he’d ever gotten.”
That’s how Dan Glickman, then a Democratic congressman from Kansas, found Bill Clinton when he met with him in November 1994. Days earlier the American electorate had treated Republicans to gains of 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate, delivering both chambers to GOP control.
If polls are accurate, voters are about to apply force to the current presidential backside. If they do, Barack Obama should take heart: In November 1996, just two years after his political obituary had been written, Bill Clinton won re-election, and it wasn’t even close. How did he do it? And can Obama follow his example?
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Huffington Post, October 18, 2010
Bill Clinton, Still the Biggest Dog in Town
It's all Bill, all the time.
There's Bill Clinton on television talking about President Obama. There's Bill Clinton talking about the Tea Party. There he is talking about the midterm elections, the Clinton Global Initiative, his healthy, not-quite-vegan diet. There he is talking about Ireland. There he is talking about Tony Blair. (There's Tony Blair talking about him.) He's receiving invitations to campaign from politicians around the country who wouldn't be caught dead standing next to Barack Obama. Chris Matthews is making a documentary about him. All this just weeks after the celebrity media couldn't get enough of his daughter's wedding.
And now there's a poll pronouncing him "the most popular politician in America."
Bill Clinton?
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Salon, October 10, 2010
It's time for Obama to pull a Clinton
For House Republicans, it looks like 1994 all over again. A president is beleaguered, the economy is lifeless. A speaker-in-waiting has taken center stage. He has unveiled a statement of principles. A big win, giving the GOP control of the House, seems inevitable.
1994 looms large for the president, too. The economy has improved under his watch, but not enough, and certainly not in time, to sway an anxious electorate. He has scored major legislative victories, but early enough in his term that voters have forgotten about them. The Republicans have succeeded in convincing large numbers of Americans that he is somehow strange, "not one of us." A big loss, giving the GOP control of the House, seems inevitable.
But if the Republicans want to make this year 1994 redux, Barack Obama needs to make it 1995
Huffington Post, September 20, 2010
Bill Clinton Feud With Rachel Maddow Springs From a Legacy Full of Contradictions
It's simplistic to call Bill Clinton, as Rachel Maddow did in March, "the best Republican president the country had, if you look at the policies that he passed." But her assertion is certainly an arguable one — as is the former president's claim last week that Maddow's statement, if true, "would come [as] quite a surprise to the Republicans, half of whom still think I'm a closet communist."
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The Nation, April 14, 2008
Oh, What a Lovely War! So?
So?
–Vice President Cheney, March 19, when asked about the American public's disapproval of the Iraq War
"I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you…in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."
–President Bush, March 13, speaking by videoconference to American military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan
These are not adolescents talking.
Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2004
They Behead; We Do It With Smart Bombs
Referring to the beheading of Nicholas Berg, one U.S. senator said, "I think it highlights the differences between the way we do business and, so frequently, our adversaries do business." Islamic terrorists have since beheaded another American and a South Korean.
Moral self-congratulation is an addiction in our nation. That we believe in "the American way," whatever that phrase may mean at any given time, signals our narcissistic satisfaction over the way we "do business." These depraved murders offer another occasion to pat ourselves on the back, another distraction from the true business of the Iraq war and all war: killing.
Los Angeles Times, Memorial Day, 2004
At an Iraq War Memorial, Will We Weep or Cheer?
On each end of Washington's new World War II memorial stands a 43-foot arch — one to signify the war's Pacific Theater, the other the Atlantic. Inlaid in the ground are the words "Victory on Land," "Victory at Sea" and "Victory in the Air."
Fifty-six granite pillars — one for each state at the time of the war, plus territories and the District of Columbia — "celebrate," according to the American Battle Monuments Commission, "the unprecedented unity of the nation during WWII." A "commemorative area" recognizes "the sacrifices of America's WWII generation, the contribution of our allies, and the suffering of all humankind." A "Freedom Wall" displays 4,048 gold stars — one for every 100 Americans who perished in the war.
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Los Angeles Times, Veterans Day, 2003
Don't Deny Horrors of War
Facing the draft in 1967, Mickey Hutchins, a 20-year-old North Carolinian whose father fought at Omaha Beach on D-day, did not burn to take up arms against Ho Chi Minh. Still, he decided against seeking a deferment. "As a citizen of this country," he recalled three decades later, "I had already received a fair number of benefits. The way I looked at it, if you're going to hang in there for the benefits you've got to hang in there for the responsibilities as well, and military service is a responsibility of citizenship."
Washington Post, Veterans Day, 2002
Honor and Sacrifice: Thoughts for veterans and for the fate of warriors to come.
In 1926, when Congress first recognized Armistice Day—what we now call Veterans Day—in commemoration of the agreement that ended World War I, it declared that Nov. 11, 1918, “marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary and far-reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed. . . .”
Three-quarters of a century after Congress expressed that hope, how tragically naïve it seems to have believed there could ever be a war to end all wars. Yet when the Cold War ended concluded, we allowed ourselves to believe it had been the war to end all wars.
Artificial Turf at Shea: No Hit and a Big Error
“Although Mr. Wilpon has voiced opposition to artificial turf and acknowledged yesterday that such a surface was not popular among all fans, he said he agreed to it ‘in the cooperative spirit of a deal.’”
– The New York Times, April 11, 1984
In the cooperative spirit of a deal. Fittingly soulless words to make known tragedy and inflict heartbreak. For when Fred Wilpon, the president of the Mets, announced the team’s surrender to the city’s ignorant and shortsighted wish for artificial turf at Shea Stadium, he pronounced the death sentence on real baseball in New York. read more
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