This article is very good:
Truth be told, this was always a marriage more of convenience than love. The party’s progressives never did like Bill Clinton’s New Democrat ways, but after Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis they needed his epic political gifts to win back the White House. They hated him for their loss of Congress in 1994, but they tolerated Dick Morris and welfare reform to keep the presidency in 1996.
The price was that they had to put their ethics in a blind Clinton trust. Whitewater and the missing billing records, Webb Hubbell, cattle futures and “Red” Bone, the Lincoln Bedroom, Johnny Chung and the overseas fund-raising scandals, Paula Jones and lying under oath, Monica and the meaning of “is.” Democrats, or all of them this side of Joe Lieberman and Pat Moynihan, defended the Clintons through it all. Everything was dismissed as a product of the “Republican attack machine,” an invention of the “Clinton haters,” or “just about sex.” …
More than a few Democrats also noticed that George W. Bush’s main campaign theme in 2000 was restoring “dignity” and “honor” to the Oval Office, and that Al Gore had somehow lost despite two-thirds of voters saying the U.S. was moving in the right direction. …
Then something astonishing happened. A new star emerged in Barack Obama, a man who had Bill Clinton’s political talent but Hillary’s liberal convictions. He had charisma, a flair for raising money, and he held out the chance of a 2008 Democratic landslide. Something more than a return to the trench warfare of the 1990s seemed possible – perhaps the revival of a liberal majority, circa 1965.
More remarkable still, Democrats supporting Mr. Obama had a revelation about Clintonian mores. …
By the time Mrs. Clinton made her famous claim about dodging Bosnian sniper fire, Democrats and their media friends no longer called it a mere gaffe, as they once might have. This time the remark was said to be emblematic of her entire political career. The same folks who had believed her about Whitewater and the rest now claimed she never tells the truth about anything.
As the scales suddenly fell from liberal eyes, the most striking statistic was the one in this week’s North Carolina exit poll. Asked if they considered Mrs. Clinton “honest and trustworthy,” no fewer than 50% of Democratic primary voters said she was not. In Indiana, the figure was merely 45%. …
The difference between now and the 1990s … is that this time the Clinton foes aren’t the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” This time the conspirators are fellow Democrats. It took 10 years, but you might say Democrats have finally voted to impeach.
I would wager a lot of money that there is a significant number of veteran Democratic senators wishing and thinking agonizing thoughts about going back to their 1998 selves and getting a group of Democratic senators together, a la Barry Goldwater in 1974, to go see Bill Clinton and tell him that the game is up — that it’s unfair that it’s only he who was caught, but that for the sake of the dignity and honor of the office, he’s got to go.
They’d have taken a hit, but then President Albert Gore Jr., with two years’ experience under his belt (and no anvil-like pardons hanging around his neck), could have gotten re-elected easily in 2000, and the War on Terror would have begun like all the good wars of the 20th century (and a couple of the not-so-good wars) had — with a Democrat in charge.
Say what you will about Democrats and their principles, but you can’t honestly blame them for Slick Willie getting caught with his willie out. And American voters would have forgiven them that, had they come down hard on him.
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They’re doing it now. And that explains, I think, why people are swooning around Obama right now.
It isn’t just his speeches — which are pablum — or his voice. Or his much vaunted “judgment”.
It’s that they don’t have to be half-ashamed any longer. They haven’t got the moral compromises of a Bill Clinton, or the douchebags like Al Gore or John Kerry. They’ve finally got a likable guy (Update: Well, maybe.) who isn’t diddling someone in the back office, and who speaks to the things they want to get done.
That’s huge.
2 responses so far ↓
Boris // May 12, 2008 at 1:33 am
Honestly, my main attraction to Bill Clinton was that I always thought he was an extremely likable guy and that his “transgressions” and the pathetically self-righteous and hypocritical way Republicans tried to force him out of the presidency only made him more likable to me. Unlike his wife, I always saw him as a person with real emotions and a real desire to use power to do good things for people. I am not naive enough to think that Bill didn’t put Bill first at all times but I have always been able to live with that (and can do so to this day) because I always believed that the condition of the United States was a close second on his list of priorities. In fact, I always thought that the only reason Bush almost won the election in 2000 was that he somehow managed to seem more like Clinton as a person (i.e. simple, charming, human and flawed) than Al Gore did, thus offsetting the edge Gore gained from the tremendously positive state of the country at the time. And, btw, I don’t think I am the only Democrat who feels this way. I honestly don’t know anyone who was ever a Bill supporter who isn’t proud to admit it and I also know many people who didn’t support him then but now openly acknowledge the error of their ways. I thus disagree with the very premise of your argument.
Btw, why do Republicans hate Gore and Kerry so much? “Douchebags”? If ever there were two national politicians whose personalities invite more apathy than them I can’t figure out who they might be. But then again, when your guy is George W. Bush and his entire claim to the presidency is that “at least he is better than the alternative” you need to convince yourself that the alternative is really, really, really bad.
Ben // May 12, 2008 at 6:28 am
No, I disliked Gore long before I was a Republican.
That’s why I voted for Nader in 2000. (Though I would have voted for Gore if NJ were close.) I didn’t want to have to vote for the guy.
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