Cheap Credentials

by digby

So, the fatuous gasbags have been all over the sexy tidbits in GQ about Taylor Branch’s new book about Bill Clinton, which contains the earth shattering revelation that Bill and Hillary Clinton don’t actually hate each other. It’s shocking stuff, for sure.

But I found this more interesting myself:

The Bill Clinton in this book is very different than the version we came to know in the press. You describe a guy who was steadfast and idealistic, very different from the wishy-washy, flip-flopping caricature who let Dick Morris tell him what to do.

It was almost like a credential for old liberals to look down on Clinton, because if you looked down on Clinton, you could say, “He’s betrayed liberalism,” but you didn’t have to uphold anything yourself. All you had to do was talk about what a shit he was or what a sellout he was and you could get this cheap credential.

Meanwhile, you’re seeing this guy whose face is red with allergies, he’s so tired that his eyes are rolling back in his head.… He’s the last fighting baby boomer.

Well, yeah. For example, I admire Obama greatly, but if you compare Clinton and Obama on the National Rifle Association, Obama said, “It’s not worth it.” Right from the get-go. “You can’t win.” And Clinton was going after the NRA and assault weapons and cop-killer bullets the whole time. And he paid for it, and maybe it was a mistake, because it certainly hurt him in the 1994 congressional elections. But he did stick to his guns, as it were. He took risks. On Haiti—restoring Aristide. I would hear him say it: “This is going to hurt my presidency.” Or, “I could go down the tubes for this.”

In all the Kennedy and Johnson tapes you’ve listened to, do you hear the same resolve?

In some ways, Kennedy was just the opposite. People would idealize him, but then on the tapes, you hear him trying to kill Castro and all this other stuff. It’s disillusioning. And Johnson does the Civil Rights bill, but then he does the Vietnam War—and you hear them saying essentially, “We know this is not going to work, but we’re going to do it anyway.” Then Nixon promises to end the war, and four years later the war is still going. Then you have Watergate. So it was kind of like we had this post–World War II optimism about politics that was yanked out of our generation by hard experience. In some ways, Hillary and I were more typical of our generation than Bill. We were bruised and disillusioned with politics. We had more in common with each other politically than either of us had with Bill. He seemed to be on automatic pilot: “I’m going to run for office!” At the time, I didn’t connect that to idealism. I connected it to ambition. The notion that it came from a sense of idealism didn’t rear up for me until I was able to watch him in the White House, seeing why he would do things.

How did you contain that for eight years, listening to people say the opposite about him?

I couldn’t communicate with people, because I felt like I was in a different galaxy. I just dropped out. I didn’t see a way of fighting it that didn’t endanger the project. I couldn’t challenge my friend [Washington Post critic] Jon Yardley, who would sit around and bitch and moan about Clinton: “He’s no good, he doesn’t care about anything, he doesn’t believe in anything.” I couldn’t say, “Jon, I know that’s not true.” I couldn’t start that conversation, because the only way I could combat it would be to say, “I’ve been around Clinton a lot, and my experience is totally different.” And then some story would come out that he had these tapes, and they would get subpoenaed. So I just basically had to be quiet and not talk to people.

I would be shocked if the village is able to process this at all. The image of Bill Clinton that was promulgated by the right wing and the mainstream media in the 90s was internalized by all sides in the political establishment. If it had been up to them he would have been convicted in the Senate and sent out of town on a rail. (It really was the people who saved him.)

It’s always been interesting to me why they hated him so, since even though he was from Arkansas (not that there’s anything wrong with that) he was also a product of all the right schools and had all the proper credentials and best connections. The class argument doesn’t really work perfectly with him. There was always something else at play.

This perhaps gives a hint of what was at the bottom of it. It’s just possible that they smelled a little earnest idealism, which is the most revolting stench imaginable to the cynical elites and those of both parties who make their living feeding on Democratic failure. It’s not surprising that they would project their own decadent, self-serving ambition on to him and then try to destroy him over it.

I’ll have to read the book, of course, and this may just be a tantalizing and ultimately irrelevant piece of revisionist history to whet our appetites. I’m hooked, that’s for sure.

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