By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
February 23, 2001
In case you haven't noticed, I haven't written anything much about Bill and Hillary Clinton lately. My last commentary on Bill Clinton was January 11 when I suggested to readers:
"What needs to happen now is for the public, and especially the people who voted for George W. Bush, to begin to ignore the obvious efforts on the part of the fading Bill Clinton to create more antagonism. Now is the time to speak up in support of the members of the Cabinet that George W. Bush has chosen and your Senators know you are not going to be happy with them if they vote to endorse the politics of personal destruction."
A month earlier, on December 18th, I had written an analysis entitled: "If Bush Brings Bipartisanship to D.C., Will it Bankrupt the Media?" I posed the question: "Can the media learn how to report news created by a peacemaker like George W. Bush rather than creating news with their non-stop contentious opinion programs? It appears from the tone of the week-end news in The Nation and much of the week-end network and print media that George W. Bush's "unity" policy is viewed as a threat to the very existence of much of the national media."
Finally, as of yesterday, one commentator in the liberal Washington Post, is facing up to the problem of searching for news without Bill Clinton. Richard Cohen, in a piece called "Yawnergate" fears he is suffering from the George Bush Sydrome:
"GBS, as it shall henceforth be known, is rooted in the fact that Bush may be the dullest president since Calvin Coolidge. In the month or so he's been in office, Bush has pledged to do better by education, raise the pay of our brave service men and women and give us all the tax cut we so unarguably deserve. I know all this stuff is important, but I can hardly write these words without falling into a stupor."Bush appoints John Ashcroft to the Justice Department and an uproar ensues. He follows with the appointment of an African American as Ashcroft's No. 2 and silence follows. He wades into groups of Democrats, patting them on the back, bestowing nicknames on them and proving, as I always feared, that he is impossible to dislike. I hate people I can't hate.
"Is it any wonder that Bill Clinton -- wonderful, newsworthy, controversial, hated, loved, polarizing Bill Clinton -- still dominates the news? We journalists cannot let go. It's true, of course, that Clinton continues to provide material -- the pardons, the gifts, the office rent, the move to Harlem. My heart leaped when the always creative Sen. Arlen Specter said that Clinton could still be impeached. Oh, yes: news! Bring back Henry Hyde and the boys.
But Bush? He's an abstraction, the genial face of an issueless time. He wants to get along, go along and, of course, get his own way. Sooner or later, he may get into a real fight with the Democrats in Congress, but at this moment it's hard to see what the issue will be -- and whether anyone will care. Bush cannot make news.
"On the day this is being written, for instance, the front pages of The Washington Post and the New York Times offer not a single story about Bush."
Folks, I fear panic is setting in among the ranks of liberal journalists in Washington, D.C. They are beginning to get desperate. And when journalists get desperate for news, they are apt to try start a war -or, at least a recession - so they have something to write about.
News sources that are dependent upon contention and conflict to sell their wares view a peace-maker like George W. Bush with considerable apprehension. In most journalists' lifetimes we have had depression, war, cold war, more war, the politics of personal destruction in Washington and the antics of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Not to mention the recent valiant effort on the part of the media to convince the public that recession is upon us.
With the exception of a few die-hard right wingers who appear to miss Bill Clinton as much as the liberals do, no one really is very interested. What has happened, as is inferred by no other than TIME magazine in its current issued entitled "The Incredible Shrinking Ex-President" is a "rats deserting a sunken ship" syndrome.
Why now? It really doesn't make much difference at this point WHAT Bill Clinton does. Should we be surprised that he left the White House in a slimy way, considering that that ENTERED the White House in a slimy way? Only a few people seemed to care about the low level of his morals and behavior before. They pulled out all the stops defending him.
So, how come the sudden outrage at Clinton behavior? How come people like Dick Morris and even elected Democrats are suddenly putting some distance between themselves and Bill Clinton?
Is this a sudden move to the right? Or, perhaps, is it merely a move to the money?. At this point the conservatives control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and probably will select two or more Supreme Court judges in the next two or three years. Ninety percent of the voters of Washington D.C. voted Democrat. At this point, a bunch of Republicans are moving into town looking for housing, schools, places to shop, etc.
It wasn't just the White House treasures that the Clintons left town with. When they left town thousands of jobs, and billions of dollars in federal tax funds no longer are controlled by Bill Clinton. Now people who want to work in Washington need to make themselves acceptable to a president who not only goes to bed early, but goes to bed with his wife, of all people. In his first month in office, Bill Clinton opened up tax supported abortion on demand for foreign countries, homosexuals in the military, a casual attitude towards White House employees with drug addiction problems.
George W.'s first month in office reinstituted the abortion ban, chose a strait-laced, law enforcing Attorney General who plans to go after drug dealers and others who break the law and announced a faith-based program to help solve problems like abortion and drug addiction.
What we have in the White House now, according to Cohen is: "Mr. Nice Guy! Mr. Routine:"
"I despair. It's been a couple of days since Bill Clinton last made news. Maybe something will break soon -- an armed robbery or something his aides talked him into at the time. I know I can't count on Bush. I'm counting the days. Less than three years until the presidential campaign starts up again. Only one person can lift my depression."Hillary Clinton."
What I believe we are now seeing are people who earn their living in politics trying desperately to make themselves over into a new, more "moral" image." If it takes stabbing the Clintons in the back as they leave, so be it. When we hear Dick Morris talking bluntly about Hillary "stealing" White House furnishings, we are hearing a man trying to convince us that he's turned over a new, more straitlaced leaf and is available for work in the new, conservative era - hopefully at the same fee he received when he worked for Bill Clinton. When TIME magazine reporters write an article belittling Bill, we are witnessing an effort on their part to position themselves for access to the White House and a line on any good stories that may arise.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
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