Every time I feel all forgive-and-forget about Bill Clinton, all Happy Warrior and all that, he says something to recall what a hard-core lout lies just beneath the surface. I forget him rushing back to Arkansas to insure the prompt execution of a retarded black man took place before the New Hampshire primary, the better to boost his “comeback” that eventually got him the presidency by showing how “tough on crime” he was. I even remember the name of the man, Ricky Ray Rector. I hope the two of you meet in hell.
Yes, I’m a liberal and Clinton supported liberal causes but things like that reminded you that there was something uglier underneath, something uglier even than the underside of Willie Stark, Robert Penn Warren’s Southern populist Huey Long type pol in the best American novel about politics, maybe the best American novel, period, All the King’s Men (if you haven’t read it you’re nigh unto politically illiterate).
It came out again with the racial insinuations during the 2008 primary campaign (just “observations” about Obama’s blackness making him a Jesse Jackson-like figure, of course). I blogged about that but thankfully I haven’t had to pay attention to the buffoon for a while.
But here he is, in full shameless, vicious form, in a quote he gave about the Monica Lewinsky affair in a new book previewed by the Politico.
I won’t go into the question the new book raises about whether Clinton would have or should have been formally indicted and tried for lying to a grand jury. I just want to highlight the response Clinton gave to a question about how the affair will affect his place in history:
“Yeah I will always have an asterisk after my name,” he said, “but I hope I’ll have two asterisks: one is ‘They impeached him,’ and the other is, ‘He stood up to them and beat them like a yard dog.'”
Stay classy, Bill, as the catchword has it. Yeah you really “beat them like a yard dog.” That’s impressive! It takes a really, really tough guy to beat a dog. You beat them so badly that the Democrats lost the presidency they surely would have won otherwise in 2000 (it wouldn’t have been close enough for the Supreme Court to steal). The first of two terms. Gave us one criminally mismanaged war and another turned into one. Tell the wounded, the widows and orphans of the brave young soldiers sent there about your personal, dog-beating triumph. I’m sure it will make them feel better. Give them the same glow of pride you feel.
Yes, you beat them so badly at the cost of humiliating your wife and ruining the life of a young woman. Beat them so badly that any last possibility for passing any piece of the liberal agenda was terminated for a decade (at least) once the entire nation was enmeshed in the folds of the little blue dress.
There was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified back then, but you were too busy ether grabbing interns or giving us lessons in “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” The meaning of “is” is, it was all about you. But you really beat them like a dog! How could you not be proud?
But forget all that. If you want to know the true character of Bill Clinton it’s there in his false macho, fake redneckism, “beat them like a yard dog.” Hey that’s really funny. You’re so down-to earth Bill, beating dogs and all. It is the pathetic effort of a Westchester County fat cat to show us his “roots.” Is that what you tell the suburban wives to give them a thrill of “authenticity”? Of all the genuinely colorful ways to characterize his struggle, among a array of colorful southern similes, he chooses an expression about beating a helpless animal, an outcast dog. It’s a slander on southerners. Disgusting.
Who’s the dog, Bill?
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