Looking for the Most Embarrassing Moment in Presidential History? Mission Accomplished!

Like Babe Ruth’s home run record, Bill Clinton’s “shot heard ’round the world” looked certain to remain the Most Embarrassing Moment in Presidential History for a long, long time. Then came George W. Bush.

Five years ago today, Bush, codpiece and all, landed a fighter jet onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared victory in Iraq. Not only was his declaration premature, he made it beneath an enormous banner reading, “Mission Accomplished.”

Like Clinton’s moment of infamy, Bush’s was truly revealing. If Clinton is an egomanaical self-absorbed sex addict with the morals of a (one-eyed trouser) snake, Bush is a deeply insecure arrested adolescent who’s used the US military as a prop for his own self-aggrandizement. The very idea of using fighter jets, an aircraft carrier, and an entire crew of sailors as backdrops in a swaggering draft dodger’s PR stunt is as pathetic as it is ludicrous.

Just as Clinton denied his boner, saying “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” while he wagged his finger at the nation, Bush now denies the “Mission Accomplished” banner referred to the war in Iraq. The Bush administration claims the banner referred to the mission of the USS Lincoln itself; White House spokesperson Dana Perino continued that farce yesterday, saying

President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said ‘mission accomplished’ for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission.

A banner with those words on it would have been as long as a Babe Ruth homerun.

Sometimes it’s the biggest egos, and sometimes the smallest, that require the most stroking.

Newsprism

Bill Clinton Denies Saying What He Said…On Tape

Asked about his comments during the South Carolina primary comparing Barack Obama’s performance there with Jesse Jackson’s—a comment many took as injecting race into the contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton—Bill Clinton told WHYY 91FM’s Susan Phillips (audio),

I think that (the Obama campaign) played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign that they planned to do it along.

Asked about the comment today, a snippy and defensive Clinton denied saying what he said (video.) The former president also dodged a question about the alleged memos he denied referring to. (Here’s the whole story from ABC News.)

Later in the WHYY interview, Clinton said his South Carolina comments were “used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign.” Then, off mic, using his genuine voice and vocabulary, he adds, “I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?”

This is vintage Bill Clinton—cynically spinning and twisting beneath that slick, golly-gee persona of his, then lying and denying about it.

Is Bill Clinton a serial liar? It depends on where your definition of “lies” lies.

Newsprism

Those Arkansaw Bumkins, or, A Gremlin In His Goober (satire)

 

Judas, Jesus, the Devil and a Blue Dress

Clinton operative James Carville reacted to former Clinton cabinet member Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Barack Obama with this Easter-season attack: on Good Friday, Carville called Richardson a “Judas.”

The comparison strikes many as both impolitic and sacriligious … but Carville not only refuses to back down, he’s reiterating the attack to every journalist he can find.

If Richardson is Judas, that would make the Clintons Jesus Christ. It would also mean that no Democrat can endorse Barack Obama without being profoundly disloyal and immoral. It would also mean that the race for the Democratic nomination—a race that Obama had locked up weeks ago—has descended well past the gutter and into a much lower, more fiery realm.

Is it coincidence that Carville looks so demonic? Or that the Clintons make up their morals to fit their ambitions?

And wasn’t there a song (here’s the Springsteen version) about the devil and a blue dress?

Newsprism

Ask Not for Whom the Gong Tolls

Hillary Clinton ramped up her rhetoric over the weekend after seeming to end the debate in Austin, Texas, on a note of reconciliation and, some presumed, resignation.

The question on many minds this morning: when will Mrs. Clinton bow out? I’m guessing it’ll take one of those long, long hooks used to drag people off the Vaudeville stage and The Gong Show.

In columns published today, Jonathan Alter of the left and Robert Novak of the right both address Clinton’s impending departure from the race. In “Hillary Should Get Out Now,” Alter makes a compelling case: Mrs. Clinton can either stubbornly outstay her welcome, or bow out gracefully in a way that would help the Democratic Party and her future electability. In “Someone in the Democratic Party needs to tell Hillary it’s over,” Novak characteristically relies on cold, hard logic: she can’t beat Obama, she can’t beat McCain, and by hanging on she’s hurting Obama’s chance to beat McCain. Plus, Novak notes, the $5 million dollar loan she made to her own campaign came from a joint account, bringing into play all of her and her husband’s financial dealings (the Clintons have yet to make their tax returns public…)

Maybe it’s just the desparation of a campaign in its last throes, but Hillary has been hitting Obama hard on the issue of plagiarism. The problem for Hillary is that the quote in question actually included phrases so well-known that there’s no need to attribute them: “I have a dream,” “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” and “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” In addition, the fact that Deval Patrick had used these same quotes in the same way is irrelevant; Patrick not only works on Obama’s campaign, but gave the Senator permission to use the passage.

Ask not for whom the gong tolls; it tolls for Hillary.

Newsprism.com

Those Arkansaw Bumkins or, A Gremlin In His Goober (satire)