The grand occasion of the release of Bill Clinton's memoirs has occasioned some truly outrageous bullshit from him and his defenders. It almost startles you, with its delusional pathos, when Joe Klein tells Tim Russert that Clinton might have been able to better "roll up" some of the al-Qaeda cells operating in our country had he been "free" to fire Louis Freeh, then director of the FBI. But why couldn't Clinton have fired someone? Because the Republicans would have jumped on him for it. Huh? You know, the Lewinsky thing. Or, I guess that's why. Who knows? It's a joke of a defense. Clinton was too hamstrung by political calculations in concealing his own lack of character to properly direct his own Administration. What a stirring moment in History.
But Klein is far outdone by Clinton himself, who said at a premiere last week for a propaganda piece made by his Hollywood friend Harry Thomason that, after the Cold War, the Republicans needed a new ememy to fight ---and that he himself filled the bill. Got that? Bill Clinton became America's antipodal substitute for the Soviet Union and the fall of Communism. Commentary, as they say, is superfluous.
It's an interesting time for comparing the accomplishments and stature of a pair of two-term Presidents. Reagan, who died two weeks ago, is already widely regarded as a giant of the 20th Century. A man of absolute conviction and fidelity, Reagan stood as an example of American strength and determination against the encroachments of a diseased ideology. He is a success. We live in his world.
And, now, in the wake of Reagan's passing, comes the self-aggrandizing Clinton, whose legacy is one of impeachment and moral bankruptcy. Dhimmicrats may howl all they want, but what they take to be the greatest accomplishment of the Clinton years (the economy, stupid) was a period of prosperity that would have come no matter who was in the Oval Office. Asshole liberals will forget that Clinton went as far as any Democrat ever has towards the fiscal center. They forget that Clinton declared that age of Big Government was over as he hacked into welfare rolls. And why did he do that? To save his own job. He co-opted the fiscal conservatism of his opponents to get re-elected.
And the "first black President" snowed the whole lot of us with his smooth words and owl shit. Then. But not now. And not ever again.