|
 Hillary
(& Bill) Clinton
excerpts
from the Iowa Daily Report
official draft Hillary website:
June
2003
And
that makes three U.S. voters – Bill, Hillary
and Howard – supporting Hillary for
president. Headline from The Union Leader
online: “Dean urges Hillary to run
someday” Associated Press in a report
from Lake Placid, where Dems met over the
weekend to discuss rural issues, said: “One
of the current contenders for next year’s
Democratic nomination for president said
Friday he would like to see New York Sen.
Hillary Clinton someday run for the White
House herself. ‘I think she would be a
great candidate,’ former Vermont Gov. Howard
Dean said in a telephone interview. ‘I
think she would be a great president.’”
The AP report said Hillary does “not
plan to run for president in 2004, but has not
ruled out a run in 2008 should President Bush
be re-elected next year.” Update:
Headline from this morning’s Washington Post
online: “Sen. Clinton Nixes 2004 White
House Run” Excerpt: “When Democratic
voters are asked which politician they want as
president, one name consistently appears at
the top – Hillary Rodham Clinton. But
the New York senator couldn’t make it any
clearer that she isn’t running for the White
House. At least not in 2004.” (6/1/2003)
New
York Times online headline: “Hillary
Clinton Taking Fire From Left as Well as Right”
Raymond Hernandez reported: “After
years of being vilified by conservatives,
Hillary Rodham Clinton is suddenly facing
mounting criticism from an unlikely quarter:
liberals.
Core Democratic constituencies that helped
Mrs. Clinton win her Senate seat in New York
two and a half years ago are expressing
deep disappointment in her, saying she has
been unwilling to challenge President Bush and
Republican leaders on issues of importance to
them.
Those who have expressed disappointment in
Mrs. Clinton include gay rights advocates,
antiwar organizers and even advocates for
children and the poor, a group with which she
has been closely associated for decades…’Is
she playing to a national audience?’ asked
Anne Erickson, the director of the Greater
Upstate Law Project, a group that advocates
for poor people in New York. ‘As a Democrat
with liberal leanings, I can personally say
that it is pretty disappointing to watch her
stances on issues,’ Ms. Erickson said. ‘We
expected better from her.’ Mrs. Clinton’s
aides say her decisions are not
part of any calculated effort to win a wider
constituency outside New York.
Rather, they say, they reflect positions she
has held since her days as first lady, like
advocating stuffer restrictions on welfare
recipients. ‘This view of Hillary
Clinton
as a dyed-in-the-wool leftist is a
caricature,’ said Howard Wolfson, an adviser
to Mrs. Clinton. ‘Anyone
who is surprised about her views on welfare
reform and the war was not paying attention
during the campaign.”
(6/1/2003)
From Paul Bedard’s “Washington Whispers”
column – subhead, “Get her now” – in
U.S. News & World Report – “Democratic
strategists are already bracing for a
bruising re-election fight for New York Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2006. These
Democrats, who don’t believe President Bush
can be beaten in his 2004 re-election bid,
predict the White House will try
to knock Clinton out of the 2008
presidential race by recruiting a
candidate to beat her in the 2006
re-election bid. One foe being wooed:
popular New York Gov. George Pataki.”
(6/3/2003)
From this
morning’s Washington Times: Greg Pierce, in
his “Inside Politics” column, wrote: “The
release on Monday of Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton’s memoir, ‘Living History,’ ‘is
shaping up to be one of the biggest literary
and political events of the year,’ USA Today
reports…Some Republicans are licking their
chops, the newspaper said. ‘It couldn’t
come at a better time for Republicans and a
worse time for Democrats,’ said Rich Bond,
former chairman of the Republican National
Committee. He thinks Mrs. Clinton will
steal the spotlight from the nine Democrats
running for president. Republican pollster
John McLaughlin agrees. ‘The poor Democrats
who are running for president are going to get
eclipsed again,’ he said.” More: The
Times’ “Inside the Beltway” column this
morning – subhead “Hillary vs. Harry” –
reported, “We never thought we’d see the
day that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be
challenging Harry Potter. And the
winner is…’I’ve ordered 400 copies of
Harry Potter and 10 copies of Hillary’s
book,’ says Barbara Theroux, owner of Fact &
Fiction bookstore in Missoula, Mont. Ms.
Theroux says a memoir like Mrs. Clinton’s.
‘Living History,’ will sell better in
‘discount places’ and adds that the Missoula
Public Library ‘will have several copies.’
Mrs. Clinton’s book hits stories Monday, and
Harry’s latest adventures on June 21.”
(6/4/2003)
Online
headline from this morning’s The Union
Leader: “Bush energy initiative helps farmers,
confounds Democratic candidates” News
analysis by Associated Press’ H. Josef Hebert
warns that opposing ethanol legislation may
be politically unhealthy for Dem wannabes.
Excerpt: “Four Democratic senators seeking
to be president are certain of it.
Opposing ethanol, the gasoline additive made
out of corn, can doom a presidential bid
almost before it starts. So as the Senate
begins in earnest this week to try to craft a
new energy agenda for America, it may not be
surprising that presidential politics – as
well as energy policy – is hard at work. The
ethanol industry is wielding its political
clout once again, with both Democrats and
Republicans ready to support a product that
means money in corn country…Sponsored by
leaders of both parties – Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Minority
Leader Tom Daschle, D-S. D., -- and the
enthusiastic backing of the White House, the
ethanol measure is almost certain to become
part of the final energy package…As for
Democratic Sens. Joe Lieberman, John Edwards,
John Kerry and Bob Graham – they know that if
their presidential bids are to avoid an ambush
in corn-loving Iowa, where voters hold
presidential caucuses in January, they had
better get on the ethanol fuel wagon. And
they have. Representatives of all four
candidates say that their support for the
Frist-Daschle ethanol proposal is solid, even
though their Democratic colleagues from
California and New York—two states with huge
presidential convention delegations – argue
that an ethanol mandate would mean higher
gasoline prices for their states’ motorists.”
Morning update: File this under the
“Low Profiles in Political Courage” folder –
As the Senate yesterday rejected two
amendments yesterday aimed at gutting the
ethanol provisions, the four senator-wannabes
were absent. (Iowa Pres Watch Note: For
the record, it appears Hillary won’t be
pinning her 2008 presidential hopes on winning
the IA caucuses in the future. She supported
both anti-ethanol amendments.)
(6/4/2003)
Hillary
Happenings: The Boston Herald –
headline, “Pols: Tell-all may be
precursor to prez bid” – reported that “Hillary
Rodham Clinton’s tell-all book about her
days in the scandal-plagued White House
fanned a new wave of speculation yesterday
about her presidential ambitions. ‘This
is all about the remaking, the repackaging
of Hillary Clinton,’ said veteran GOP
consultant Greg Mueller. ‘It’s all part
of a plan for her to run for the White House
in 2008.’” The Herald’s Andrew Miga
wrote that “even former Clinton aides say
they were surprised by the former first
lady’s candor recounting painful episodes
such as the Monica Lewinsky scandal and her
husband’s betrayal in ‘Living History,’ her
memoir. ‘Hillary is an intensely
private person,’ said former Clinton White
House aide Paul Begala. ‘This could not have
been easy for her – to go through it all
again.’” (6/6/2003)
… Headline from this morning’s Omaha
World-Herald: “Storms abated, both
Clintons back on national political scene”
The
W-H publishes New York Times coverage: “With
the tabloid headlines about her marriage,
the prime-time interview tonight with
Barbara Walters and the promise of a cover
story in Time magazine, Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton rode the wave of an
extravagant publicity campaign last week
that befits the publication of a book for
which she was paid $8 million. But in
many ways, some friends of the Clintons
said, it is not just a memoir by a former
first lady that is being rolled out.
It is also the Clintons themselves,
embarking on the latest chapter in a public
life that made then an object of admiration,
scorn and puzzlement since the former
governor of Arkansas ran for president in
1992 and sold them as a ‘buy one, get one
free’ team of public servants. Hillary
Clinton is dealing with an issue, her
husband’s infidelity, which she has until
now rarely addressed in public, and which
her own advisers viewed as a hindrance to a
public career that they would like to see
end back in the White House. And, by
design or not, her book arrives this week at
a time when her husband appears to be ending
a self-imposed moratorium and taking more of
a hand in national Democratic politics. The
Clintons spent much of the first 30 months
of the Bush presidency keeping a low profile
and trying to avoid the storms that engulfed
Clinton’s presidency, his friends say.
But that period is coming to an end, as they
try in different ways to assert their
presence in American politics. And embark on
promoting books for which they were paid
advances totaling close to $20 million.
Former President Clinton’s memoir is to be
published in 2004.” (6/8/2003)
… “The
Clintons: Weapons of Mass Destruction”
That’s the headline on a GOPUSA online
commentary yesterday by Doug Patton
about Hillary’s latest “Living
History” literary effort. An excerpt: “This
book is being touted as ‘a memoir,’ and is
designed to gently get us all past the
scandals of Bill Clinton’s presidency and
clear the way for the couple to return to
the White House in 2009. By any measure,
the book should be called ‘Living Fantasy.’
In fact, most pundits outside the
national broadcast networks and the
now-discredited spin factory at The New York
Times, scoff at the notion that this is a
‘tell-all’ book of personal pain written by
the former First Lady. It is not, of course.
Rather, it is a cynical attempt to
reinvent the smartest woman in the world
into the warmest, most forgiving woman in
the world. Speculation ran wild
concerning what the book might reveal about
the Clintons’ marriage and the strange
political partnership that has dominated our
national psyche for far too long. What
would Barbara Walters ask Hillary in
her prime time interview on Sunday night?
America was told to be on pins and needles.
We were all agog. Of course, the
nauseatingly sweet interview consisted of
nerf balls tossed at Sen. Clinton in what
became a shameless attempt to soften her
image to a skeptical public. Gerald
Ford once described Watergate as ‘our long
national nightmare.’ The Clintons have
become a self-imposed nightmare that simply
won’t go away.” (6/10/2003)
… NEW
POLL. If the election were held today,
President Bush would defeat Hillary Clinton by
a 53-40 margin – and that’s as good as the
news gets for any Dems, and especially
for the announced Dem wannabes. Against
Hillary, GWB would win 54-36 among
independents, 59-34 with men and even have a
49-45 advantage among women voters. A new
Quinnipiac poll – released this morning –
indicates that the news is even worse for
the wannabes as long as Hillary looms in the
background. With her in the mix,
Hillary would get 40% support among Dems
with Lieberman in second at 16%,
followed by Gephardt (10%) and Kerry
(8%). Next: Graham with 4%.
Without Hillary, Lieberman (22%) leads the
field with Gephardt at 17% and Kerry
registering 15% support. Twenty-one percent
remain undecided while the other wannabes are
all in single digits – Graham at 6%, a
three-way tie (Edwards, Dean, Sharpton) at 5%,
Moseley Braun 4%, and Kucinich 1%. More
good news for the GOP – and bad news for
Dems: Bush would, if the election were
held now, take out Lieberman by a 53-40
margin, Kerry 53-37 and Gephardt 54-38.
Voters approve (63%-31%) of the way GWB is
handing terrorism overseas and his handling
(69%-25%) of terrorism at home, but he gets a
negative (45%-50%) review for his handling of
the economy. The Quinnipiac poll – conducted
6/4-9 – has a margin of error of +/- 3.3%.
(6/11/2003)
… Headline
from yesterday’s The Union Leader: “NH Dems:
No 2004 national Clinton run” The Union
Leader’s senior political reporter, John
DiStaso, wrote: “Sen. Hillary Clinton is
attracting a new wave of national attention
for her latest book, ‘Living History,’ but key
New Hampshire Democrats say the publication is
not a precursor to a Presidential candidacy.
At least not a 2004 candidacy. Veteran
state Democratic activists Terry Shumaker and
Ricia McMahon are friends of the former first
lady and her husband – friendships dating back
to former President Bill Clinton’s first visit
to the Granite State campaign trail in 1991.”
(6/11/2003)
…
Headline: “Exclusively from NewsMax.com
-- “The Deck of Hillary” Can Stop
Hillary’s Book” Excerpts: “Sick of
the media’s puffery of Hillary Clinton and
her new book in an obvious effort to help
her presidential chances? Now,
www.Newsmax.com has the perfect
antidote to the liberal media’s Hillary
love fest: the Deck of Hillary…In the
Deck of Hillary, NewsMax.com
reveals the real Hillary—by using
her own quotes…As the Pentagon proved
with its deck of Most Wanted Iraqis,
there’s no better way to ‘out’ the enemy
than to depict it on a deck of cards…You’ll
die laughing at Hillary, from our
‘Statue of Hilary’ design on the back of
every card, modeled after the Statue of
Liberty – to the great photos that capture
the real Hillary – to her own
shocking statements over several decades
in public life.”(6/12/2003)
… From the
Opinion pages of this morning’s Des Moines
Register: Headline on reprinted column by
the New York Daily News’ Zev Chafets: “Hillary
Clinton is humanized, but diminished”
(6/12/2003)
… On National Review Online yesterday –
headline, “Setting the Record Straight…
An open letter to Hillary Clinton” – former
Clinton consultant Dick Morris responded to
a claim Hillary made in her book.
Morris’ open letter says Hillary
asserted “incorrectly that my reluctance [to
help in the 1994 congressional elections]
stemmed from difficulties in working with
your staff. You even misquote me as telling
you: ‘I don’t like the way I was treated,
Hillary. People were so mean to me.’…The
real reason I was reluctant was that Bill
Clinton had tried to beat me up in May of
1990 as he, you, Gloria Cabe, and I were
together in the Arkansas governor’s mansion.
At the time, Bill was worried that he was
falling behind his democratic primary
opponent and verbally assaulted me for not
giving his campaign the time he felt it
deserved. Offended by his harsh tone, I
turned and stalked out of the room. Bill
ran after me, tackled me, threw me to the
floor of the kitchen in the mansion and
cocked his fist back to punch me. You
grabbed his arm and, yelling at him to stop
and get control of himself, pulled him off
me. Then you walked me around the grounds of
the mansion in the minutes after, with your
arm around me, saying, ‘He only does that to
people he loves.’ I continued to work
for Bill since I felt a responsibility to do
so until Election Day in 1990. But our
relationship was never close and never the
same. After the 1990 campaign we parted
ways as a direct result of the altercation.
When the story threatened to surface during
the 1992 campaign, you told me to ‘say it
never happened.’ That, and not the
invented conversation in your memoir, was
the reason that I was reluctant to work for
Bill again. Yours, Dick Morris.”
(6/13/2003)
… Excerpt
from a letter to the editor in yesterday’s
Des Moines Register: “Whatever [Hillary]
Clinton’s faults may be, her personal
mistakes should not overshadow her political
life. Reducing her to her marital troubles
only perpetuates the tendency to reduce all
women to the sum of their personal lives
while neglecting their public lives. In
Clinton’s case, her public life has been
considerable, regardless of whether you
agree with her politics or not. And that is
the point: Hillary Clinton may or may
not make an ‘ideal’ presidential candidate,
but she deserves the chance.” – Stephanie
Haskins, West Des Moines (Iowa Pres
Watch Note: And, here’s another point: Would
any of us ever heard of Hillary
Clinton’s personal or public lives – or
would she have had a prayer of ever being in
the U. S. Senate – if she hadn’t married
Bill Clinton in the first place?)
(6/15/2003)
… Weekend
leftover, but too good to pass up. In
Newsday – headline, “Democrats Sinking in
the Clinton Quicksand” – political
consultant John Richard Starkey wrote: “It
may be churlish for a New York Democrat to
say this, but I believe Hillary Clinton’s
book is the best thing to happen to George
W. Bush since postwar Iraq began to implode…Hillary
Clinton surely did not time her book’s
publication to steal the spotlight from the
nine Democratic presidential candidates, but
that’s the result. At a moment when Bush
appears to be an increasingly vulnerable
target, the opposition candidates’
rhetorical bulls’-eyes are muffled by the
din over ‘Living History.’ Just last
week, coincidental with leaks about the
book’s contents, eight of the nine
Democratic hopefuls spoke rousingly at a
three-day progressive ‘Take Back America’
conference in Washington. The media
coverage they and their liberal ideas
received was virtually nonexistent.
Hillary’s ability to dominate the attention
of the celebrity-conscious public has
worrisome long- and short-term implications
for the Democratic Party…Bush will
get the last laugh over his immediate
opponents, however, thanks to the Clintons.
Just as the buzz over Hillary’s
book will be fading in the fall, Bill
Clinton’s book is scheduled to appear.
His first-hand account of the many
happenings on his watch should gladden his
successor even more. It will keep alive the
Monica Lewinsky story that Hillary’s
book revived, and with it the comparison of
the moral tone of the two White Houses.
And Bill Clinton’s book will pick up where
Hillary’s left off in eclipsing the
Democratic presidential aspirants as they –
and the party – try in vain to get out from
under the Clintons shadow.” (Iowa Pres
Watch Note: Bill’s Clinton’s book is
scheduled for release next year, but we
chose to include this excerpt to make the
point about what’s being said – that the
Clintons are suffocating the Dem party and
the 2004 wannabes.) (6/16/2003)
… Item from
Robert Novak’s weekend column in the Chicago
Sun-Times: “No fellow Democrat volunteered to
give Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton protective
cover when she was the only senator voting
against the nomination of Michael Chertoff as
a judge on the 3rd U. S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Chertoff was
chief counsel of the Senate’s 1995
investigation of the investment by the
Clintons in the Whitewater project. Chertoff
was confirmed Monday, 88-1. On May 24, 2001,
Chertoff was confirmed as an assistant
attorney general by a 95-1 vote, with Clinton
the only dissenter. On the same day, she was
also the only no-voter when the Senate
confirmed, by 95-1, Viet Dinh as an assistant
attorney general. Dinh was a staffer in the
Senate Whitewater investigation and President
Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. Sen. Clinton
said nothing in these debates before casting
her solitary negative votes.’ (6/16/2003)
From
the Iowa Pres Watch Vault: The
column on Hillary’s book by the
Orlando Sentinel’s Kathleen Parker is almost
a week old and worth a read – and serious
consideration, especially by the misguided
contingent of Hillary book buyers and
worshipers. Park wrote last Wednesday: “For
waiting in line and plunking down $28,
Hillary readers get exactly what? Not
much more than an expansion of untruths
added to what they already knew to be false:
In her book and in interviews, which all
seem to derive from the same script,
Hillary insists: She has no intention of
running for president. Not true. She
had no idea her husband was a sexual
predator: Not true. She wanted ‘to
wring Bill’s neck.’ Say what? A mom
wants to wring her 10-year-old son’s neck
when he tracks mud through her freshly
mopped kitchen. When a grown woman finds
her husband has become intimate with the
help, she wants to invite Lorena Bobbitt to
din-din and forget to put the cleaver in the
dishwasher. There is about Hillary
Clinton a frightening inevitability that
ought to send shivers down the spines of
those who still have them. Like her
husband, she is able to hold a steady gaze
and seduce her audience with false virtue
even as she dissembles. Of course
Hillary Clinton intends to run for
president – and is running even as readers
consume the book she hired three others to
write. Of course she knew what kind of
man she was married to and was an accomplice
to his distortions and cover-ups. And of
course Hillary Clinton – the un-Tammy
Wynette who once told a nation she didn’t
bake cookies and wasn’t a stand-by-your-man
kind of woman – would bake a 12-tiered
wedding cake and stand by the devil if
that’s what it takes to fulfill her destiny
as First Woman. That, in fact, is what’s
true.” (6/17/2003)
…”Two Years After White House Exit,
Clintons Shaping Democratic Party” –
Headline from yesterday’s Washington Post.
Excerpts from coverage by Post’s Jim VandeHei:
“Thirty months after leaving the White
House draped in controversy, the Clintons are
again dominating Democratic politics in
Washington and beyond. Former president Bill
Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton (N. Y.) are
grabbing headlines almost daily, raising
millions of dollars for Democratic campaigns
and doling out political advice to all who
will listen, which includes most of the
leading candidates to challenge President Bush
in 2004… Many focus group participants
called the former president ‘immoral, smooth,
crooked’ and dishonest, the aide said, while
Hillary Clinton was seen as an ‘opportunist.’
‘It gives us a brand we just don't need,’ the
aide said. ‘The rehashing of the negatives is
something we all wish would go away,’ said
Sen. John Breaux (D-La.). But the Clintons
‘clearly have the ability to excite people,
probably more than anyone else in the party.’
Some Republicans seize on the Clintons'
unpopularity to raise money for their
political efforts. Senate Republicans have a
‘Stop Hillary Now’ link on their Web site.
Other GOP leaders, however, say the Clintons'
most negative legacies -- including the Monica
S. Lewinsky scandal -- are losing some of
their bite…Hillary Clinton -- who is
taking her turn as the family's public face
and political force -- is widely expected to
play a leading role in next year's
presidential and Senate campaigns. She is
promoting her best-selling book ‘Living
History’ and hitting up donors with energy and
stagecraft reminiscent of a national campaign.
The newspaper Roll Call recently reported that
the DSCC has arranged for the senator to host
at least seven Democratic fundraisers before
August, all coordinated with her book tour.
While Hillary Clinton remains one of the most
divisive figures in contemporary politics,
polls routinely show she could jump into the
crowded Democratic presidential field tomorrow
as the frontrunner. Many believe she is
preparing for a run in 2008, soon enough to
satisfy her ambitions, long enough for bad
memories of family scandals to fade, at least
partially. A family friend said there is
little doubt she will run in 2008 if Bush wins
reelection. Hillary Clinton might face
a challenge from another Clinton White House
figure. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson,
the Clinton administration's energy secretary,
was in town this week privately sounding like
he would run in '08, according a Democratic
official. Bill Clinton remains deeply
involved in party politics, too, although he
has told congressional leaders he will spend
most of this year raising money for his
presidential library, giving paid speeches and
finishing his book.” (6/22/2003)
…
From the “Reliable Sources” column in
yesterday’s Washington Post -- “From the
Ministry of Truth Mailbag: Writer Fredric
Alan Maxwell has just received a handwritten
fan letter from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
(D-N.Y.) for an April 27 New York Times
Magazine column about his unsettling
experience of being investigated by the Secret
Service. The agency was concerned about an
unfriendly remark about George W. Bush
that Maxwell was overheard allegedly making in
a bar. While being interrogated by agents,
Maxwell wrote, he volunteered that he had
attended a White House news conference and
that ‘Hillary looks far better in person.’
The senator responded: ‘Dear Mr. Maxwell: I
vouched for you with the Secret Service --
anyone who thinks I look better in person is a
true patriot, albeit myopic. In any event,
don't let this experience deter you from
speaking up and out. We need to keep our
sense of humor during this Orwellian time.
All the best, Hillary Rodham Clinton."
(6/25/2003)
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