Mudslingers ready to go after Hillary
Years ago, I asked Betsey Wright, Bill Clinton’s former Arkansas chief-of-staff, why she’d urged him not to run for president in 1988. Contrary to a thousand press reports, Wright denied confronting Clinton with a “bimbo list.” She had, however, warned him that the country wasn’t ready for a candidate like him. “The guy represented generational change,” Wright explained. “He was a baby boomer. He’d been on campus during the Vietnam War. He did not go to Vietnam. He had been on campuses when birth control pills were first invented, and, quote, free sex, unquote, became a big deal. He had a brother who had gotten in trouble with drugs. … He was attractive to women. There were a million rumors, and there were lots of people who would be willing to make allegations. I just knew there was no way we were going to make that kind of generational change in this country without a struggle.”
From 1992, the GOP smear machine made Wright look like a prophet. They accused Clinton of everything from bank fraud to drug-smuggling, rape, even murder.
I once asked the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who peddled the infamous “Clinton Chronicles,” if the commandment against bearing false witness was less important than the other nine. He said no, then alibied that he didn’t know whether the allegations in the video were true or not. That’s actually a better answer than you’d get from The Washington Post.
Today, many Democrats harbor similar misgivings about Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Is the United States ready to elect any woman, much less her? Issues aside, many fear her nomination would set off a bizarre national psychodrama ending with Democrats losing the most crucial (and winnable) presidential election in living memory. Others are simply sick of her the way they’re sick of Paris Hilton and the media’s prurient speculation.
The press rollout of a Carl Bernstein’s highly publicized new book did little to allay such misgivings. Indeed, the episode served mainly to illustrate the decline of American political journalism to tabloid standards. Fifteen years ago, prominent Washington hostesses circulated rumors the new first lady was gay. Now celebrity journalist Bernstein gets asked about it on national TV. Somewhat to his credit, he said no. He also parried a suggestion by CNN’s Paula Zahn that her religious views are fake.
Otherwise, Bernstein’s tour promoting “A Woman in Charge” was an utter disgrace. For details, consult Bob Somerby at dailyhowler.com and Jamison Foser at mediamatters.org On the “Today” show, Bernstein called Hillary a phony for concealing she’d failed the D.C. bar exam, a revelation he’d gleaned from her best-selling autobiography “Living History.”
During an NPR interview, he called her inauthentic for concocting an idyllic “Father Knows Best” childhood although her father beat her. From Hillary’s book “It Takes a Village”: “My father, not one to spare the rod … (o)occasionally … got carried away when disciplining us, yelling louder or using more physical punishment, especially with my brothers than I thought was fair or necessary.”
Who’s the real phony? But what really excites these jokers is the mysterious Clinton marriage. Apparently, adultery was unknown in Washington before Monica Lewinsky. Traveling in Ireland recently, my wife was told by several women how much they admired Hillary for keeping her dignity and saving her marriage – concepts alien to the adolescent mind
Writing in The New York Times, Irish-American columnist Maureen Dowd likened Hillary to the TV mobster’s wife Carmela Soprano. On “Hardball,” Chris Matthews compared her to a hitman from “The Godfather.” Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan says she has “to prove she has normal human warmth.”
The apparent cause of this old-maidish swooning is Bernstein’s televised charge that while she forgave Bill’s infidelities, she “savaged” the women. Challenged by PBS’s Charlie Rose to name a victim, he quickly backed down. And well he might, because Bernstein’s book documents no such claim. At issue is an oft-reported fraudulent 1990 lawsuit brought by one Larry Nichols, world-class crackpot and narrator of Falwell’s “Clinton Chronicles.”
Fired by Clinton for making 652 long-distance calls for the Nicaraguan contras at state expense, Nichols retaliated with a pre-election lawsuit naming five alleged Clinton mistresses. It got dismissed quickly for lack of evidence – none whatsoever, in fact. Nichols recanted and apologized publicly.
But not before Hillary, as she’d previously mentioned during the famous 1992 “60 Minutes” interview in which her husband confessed causing pain in his marriage, met with two of the women “to reassure them. They were friends of ours. I felt terrible about what was happening to them.” Bernstein’s book, unlike his TV interviews, appropriately describes the women as innocent bystanders.
Three conclusions: First, there’s no depth these Washington character assassins won’t sink to. Ignore the op-ed psychoanalysts and stick to the issues. Two, remember that Bill Clinton won twice anyway. Three, don’t kid yourself: Any Democratic nominee will get similar treatment. Hillary’s simply the front-runner.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at genelyons2@sbcglobal.net.