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Jewish World Review Feb. 25, 2000 / 19 Adar I, 5760
Chris Matthews
"Sen. Bradley claims he's doing us a service because he
doesn't want to see Democrats bashed in the fall," he told
the party faithful. "His proposed solution is to bash
Democrats in the spring."
With those words, Gore defined the 2000 race for
president. In Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf's phrase, he
"shaped the battlefield." Any Bradley attack on the
Clinton-Gore fund-raising sleaze of 1996 is an attack on
"Democrats."
John McCain agrees with those terms of war. He's made
clear that the 2000 Republican nominee should be the
one most ready and able to launch a frontal, all-out attack
on what the Arizona senator calls "the truth-twisting
politics of Bill Clinton and Al Gore."
The Democratic and Republican candidates will be
judged, both Gore and McCain agree, by their proximity
to the current president.
Any shot by Bradley for booting the health-care issue in
1994 or shaking down Buddhist nuns two years ago is
being made by Gore to boomerang against the challenger.
Meanwhile, the feisty McCain scores points on Bush by divebombing those
"truth-twisters" currently in office at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Clinton, true to character, refuses to acknowledge his role as the campaign's
prime target of opportunity for attacker and defender both.
Here is what a National Public Radio reporter asked at last week's
first-of-the-year White House press conference: "I'm wondering if you could
comment on both aspects of your influence, both the negative, the fact that
everybody seems to be running against your behavior, and also, on the other
side, why everyone seems to sound like you when they discuss policy."
"Well, I think for the Republicans it's probably good politics to do that," Clinton
answered, "because they spent years and years trying to tell everybody how
bad I am. However, people are very smart, and it's pretty hard to convince
them that they should hold anyone responsible for someone else's mistake,
particularly a personal mistake."
Once again, Clinton is dismissing as a faux pas not just his months-long
behavior in a West Wing hallway with a young White House intern on the
presidential payroll — a young woman brought in to learn, ironically, how
government really works — but his decision to recruit his staff, Cabinet, friends
and party into a year-long campaign of cover-up.
Just "personal"?
Public conduct that laid the basis for impeachment by the
Republican-controlled House of Representatives? Votes to remove him from
office by 50 Senate Republicans and a censure resolution signed by 29
Democratic U.S. senators, including most of the party's big-name liberals?
Instead of taking public responsibility for "personal" acts, it could be argued,
President Clinton must take personal responsibility for what were undeniably
public acts.
Until he bites that bullet, his chosen successor must keep on defending the
tainted Clinton-Gore administration, and Republicans will continue to beat his
veep
02/23/00: Will Ross Perot aid POW McCain?
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