The Uncivil War Against Bill and Hillary Clinton
by eriposte
I have a feeling this is going to become a regular feature from now on.
Vanity Fair has just published an extract, titled "White House Civil War", from the upcoming book "For Love of Politics—Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years" by "contributing editor" Sally Bedell Smith. The extract is about the alleged "civil war" between Al Gore and the Clintons back in 1999/2000. To save you the trouble of reading the book, I'm going to quote parts of the extract and translate it into English for us common folk. I am a great fan of former Vice President Al Gore and as much as he had tensions and disagreements with the Clinton White House during and after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, I don't believe for a minute he authorized this pile of crap (what is clear is that one or more anonymous aides of Gore took this opportunity to trash the Clintons and all I can say is shame on them). So, none of my comments here are intended as criticisms of Mr. Gore. They are really just observations on the media's Clinton-hatred or ingrained sexism that seems to afflict many in the media elite when the topic is Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, I found it unsurprising that some of the unmitigated nonsense in this article was dutifully stenographed into a Daily Kos diary a few days ago. (Note that all emphasis in this post is mine.)
Bill [Clinton] refused to acknowledge that his behavior was a factor in the [Gore 2000] campaign. "I never believed that the American people were going to, in effect, vote against their own interests and their own values by holding Al Gore responsible for a personal mistake I made," Bill told Ron Brownstein before the convention.
Translation of Sally Bedell Smith, for us rubes:
How utterly idiotic and self-aggrandizing of Bill Clinton to have been so extraordinarily prescient that Al Gore would actually get the majority of the votes in the 2000 election despite Bill Clinton's problems.
Incidentally, the claim that Bill "refused to acknowledge that his behavior was a factor..." is in itself not accurate. For example, here's Sally Bedell Smith, elsewhere in the same article:
Bill recalled telling Gore in the fall of 1999 that he would "stand on the doorstep of the Washington Post's headquarters and let him lash me with a bullwhip" if it would help his campaign.
2. Hillary v. Al, Part I
"If she runs, we'd wish her well, but we sure could use her help," a top Gore aide had said back in February, when Hillary first publicly signaled her interest in the Senate race. Now Gore's campaign advisers began to worry that Hillary's candidacy would actually have an adverse effect on their candidate. "The implications for Gore are very serious," said New York's former Democratic governor Mario Cuomo. "She has to think very hard on this issue."
Translation of Sally Bedell Smith, for us rubes:
How dare Hillary Clinton run for the Senate when Al Gore, a far more important man who had a God-given right to be President, was running for President!
How dare Hillary display such 'naked ambition' and run for the Senate at a time when Al, utterly non-ambitious, was only running for President!
Join me below the fold for more on the untrammeled political punditry of VF's contributing editor!
3. Hillary v. Al, Part II
Not only was Hillary unavailable as a campaigner, she was poaching top Democratic fund-raisers and donors who would normally concentrate on the vice president.
[...]
A more serious conflict arose from the schedule of events in which Bill and Hillary raised millions for themselves, distracting attention from the presidential race, siphoning off Democratic money, and further angering the vice president and his team.
Translation of Sally Bedell Smith, for us rubes:
How dare Hillary run for Senate, and therefore not have time to help Al's campaign!
Worse, how dare Hillary run for Senate and ask donors to support her campaign when Al was running for President! Didn't she know that Democratic donors either donate to the Presidential race or to a Senate race but not both?
4. Bill v. Al
As a sitting president, Bill was in a unique position to boost his vice president's candidacy by scheduling White House events to highlight his achievements. But in 1999 those resources were diverted from Gore to Hillary "in a big way," said one member of the Gore team. "The Clintons come first. That was their basic framework."
Translation of Sally Bedell Smith, for us rubes:
Those narcissistic, self-promoting Clintons!! How dare Bill screw poor Al's Presidential campaign by not holding more fundraisers and public events in support of Al!
Sally Bedell Smith, a few paragraphs EARLIER in the same article:
Gore officially announced his candidacy for president on June 16, 1999, at the Smith County Courthouse, in Carthage, Tennessee...For Gore, the announcement provided an opportunity to redefine himself and to create some distance from Bill's personal problems. Since the Lewinsky scandal had broken, Gore had expressed his dismay about Bill's conduct to a small circle of advisers but had kept quiet publicly.
While polls showed the president's job-approval ratings holding at around 60 percent, questions about [Clinton's] character were taking a toll on Gore.
...At his announcement, Gore was surrounded by Tipper, his four children, and his mother. He repeatedly stressed the importance of family values and referred to the president only twice.
Sally Bedell Smith, several paragraphs LATER in the same article:
Bill headlined four Gore fund-raisers in August and September, two of them on the same night at Washington's Hay-Adams hotel. He called Gore "the single most influential, effective, powerful, and important vice president" in history but did no more events for his vice president for the rest of the year. Bill later complained that his efforts—giving Gore "high profile assignments" over the years, "making sure he received public recognition"—had been unappreciated, especially when he read suggestions that he could "cost Al the election" by associating with him. Bill recalled telling Gore in the fall of 1999 that he would "stand on the doorstep of the Washington Post's headquarters and let him lash me with a bullwhip" if it would help his campaign.
[...]
The tensions centered on the Lewinsky scandal and Bill's past womanizing, which Gore and his advisers believed had alienated independent voters—especially the soccer moms, who stood for traditional values. "Gore was quite offended in terms of personal morality and also political stupidity," said one of Hillary's advisers. Bruce Reed understood that "the vice president would be disappointed by and resentful of the president's mistakes. The way it played out in the campaign was the real damage in how much it threw Gore off his game." As a result, Gore veered too far in differentiating himself from Bill and his record and had difficulty taking advantage of the Clinton administration's legitimate successes.
5. Hillary v. Tipper
At a White House reception in late July for the winners of the Women's World Cup soccer championship, Hillary singled out "my dear friend Tipper Gore" as "a great athlete in her time." But by then Hillary had privately frozen out Tipper, who had given her steadfast support during the Lewinsky ordeal. Hillary never made clear her reasons for the snub, which became apparent once she started running for the Senate. Tipper was reported to be stunned, believing she had been cast aside because she was no longer useful.
Sally Bedell Smith, several paragraphs EARLIER in the same article:
At his announcement, Gore was surrounded by Tipper, his four children, and his mother. He repeatedly stressed the importance of family values and referred to the president only twice. Later that evening, Al and Tipper sat for an interview on ABC's 20/20 with Diane Sawyer. Asked about the Lewinsky affair, Gore said, "I thought it was awful. I thought it was inexcusable. But I made a commitment to serve this country as vice president." He added that "as a father" he felt the president's behavior "was terribly wrong, obviously." Seeking to differentiate his character from Bill's, he said, "It is our own lives we must master if we are to have the moral authority to guide our children."
[...]
The tensions centered on the Lewinsky scandal and Bill's past womanizing, which Gore and his advisers believed had alienated independent voters—especially the soccer moms, who stood for traditional values. "Gore was quite offended in terms of personal morality and also political stupidity," said one of Hillary's advisers. Bruce Reed understood that "the vice president would be disappointed by and resentful of the president's mistakes. The way it played out in the campaign was the real damage in how much it threw Gore off his game." As a result, Gore veered too far in differentiating himself from Bill and his record and had difficulty taking advantage of the Clinton administration's legitimate successes.
Translation of Sally Bedell Smith, for us rubes:
How dare Hillary (allegedly) minimize contact with Tipper when Tipper's husband was berating Hillary's husband [Bill] publicly, sometimes in the presence of Tipper, and also trying to avoid him [Bill]!
6. Sally v. Sally
The Gore-Lieberman ticket found itself on the wrong side of the classic pendulum of American politics. In 1992, the momentum was beginning to swing toward the Democrats after 12 years of G.O.P. control of the White House, and Ross Perot helped by taking the vast majority of his votes from George H. W. Bush. But by 2000 the pendulum was moving in the other direction, propelled by the Clinton scandals, which had alienated religious and swing voters.
Sally Bedell Smith, a paragraph EARLIER:
[Gore's] popular vote was 50,999,897, exceeded only by Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide.... he had received far more votes and a higher percentage than Bill Clinton had in his two presidential races...
Translation of Sally Bedell Smith, for us rubes:
I hope you really didn't notice that I said momentum had swung so much away from Democrats by 2000 that Al Gore won a much higher % of the popular vote than Bill Clinton ever got, despite Bill Clinton's Lewinsky problem.
Need I say more?