Blagojevich, Muddled Movie Maven

The ethically deprived Illinois governor is a trifle short of smarts about pop culture as well.

Reacting to his impeachment today by the legislature, Rod Blagojevich said, "I feel like the old Alan Sillitoe short story 'The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.' ... And that's what this is by the way, a long-distance run."

If he ever read the story or saw the 1962 movie, Blagojevich might recall it's all about a petty thief with swift feet and serious psychological problems who, in a key scene, stuffs his loot into a drainpipe, only to have a rainstorm wash it down at his feet while being questioned by a detective.

Even the ending should be no consolation, as the rebellious hero, well ahead in the race, stops short of the finish line with a defiant sneer on his face, the last gesture of a loser.

Patrick Fitzgerald may have seen the movie, too.

Blagojevich's Human Shield

Taking a cue from Saddam Hussein who surrounded himself with innocent civilians when under attack, Rod Blagojevich has added a new touch, playing the race card by appointing an African-American to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat and daring Democrats to reject his pick and try to bomb him out of the governor's chair.

Blagojevich, who has a lock on the Shameless Person of the Year Award, is in Hall of Fame territory here by appointing Roland Burris, a 71-year-old non-Caucasian who has served as Illinois state comptroller and attorney general.

But as the Governor celebrates his new coup, someone should remind him that the tactic did not work out too well for Saddam (see Baghdad, fallen statue). Senate Democrats have made it clear they won't seat Blagojevich's choice, Patrick Fitzgerald is getting ready to release some of the juicier taped phone calls and the Illinois legislature is on track with impeachment proceedings.

Happy New Year, Governor, it's all downhill from here.

Obama and Bill Clinton Share a Laugh

There was a moment last night when Barack Obama was saying the McCain campaign was calling him a Socialist because he had once shared a peanut butter sandwich with a classmate and Bill Clinton laughed--not that slit-eyed, calculated political chuckle but a genuine guffaw of recognition from someone who had suffered the smear treatment and survived.

When the former President was being hounded by Newt Gingrich and his merry midgets, it was no laughing matter, and there is still reason to believe that Clinton failed to take out Osama bin Laden when he could have back then because it would have been seen as a "Wag the Dog" diversion from his impeachment.

But more than a decade later, the politics of personal destruction has worn thin, and what was tragic back then can be seen as comedy now in the tired attacks that McCain-Palin are mouthing about terrorists, wealth-spreaders and the like.

In his campaign, Barack Obama may not exactly be standing on Bill Clinton's shoulders, as he graciously suggested last night (“In case all of you forgot, this is what it’s like to have such a great president”), but in the finesse with which he is swatting away Rovian accusations in these final days, the candidate of tomorrow is definitely profiting from the bitter experience of yesterday's target.

It was nice to see them sharing a laugh about it last night.

Musharraf Does a Nixon

In the face of impeachment, Pervez Musharraf is resigning as president of Pakistan, sounding eerily like Richard Nixon almost 34 years ago to the day.

"I don't want the people of Pakistan to slide deeper and deeper into uncertainty," Musharraf said today. "For the interest of the nation, I have decided to resign as president,"

"I have always tried to do what was best for the nation," Nixon said in August 1974, avowing that "the interest of the nation must always come before any personal considerations."

Nixon left office with the claim, "In the Middle East, 100 million people in the Arab countries, many of whom have considered us their enemy for nearly 20 years, now look on us as their friends. We must continue to build on that friendship so that peace can settle at last over the Middle East and so that the cradle of civilization will not become its grave."

Musharraf departs with the Middle East in turmoil after his milking the US of billions of dollars ostensibly to fight terrorists in Pakistan's border areas but leaving behind a crisis in which more Americans are being killed there now than in Iraq.

He exits with a beleaguered government holding nuclear weapons that are controlled who-knows-how by who-knows-whom, with no assurances that "peace can settle at last over the Middle East" and that "the cradle of civilization will not become its grave."

The Two Bill Clintons

Soon after he moved into the White House, Bill Clinton was tagged by Maureen Dowd as the first president who was still social-climbing.

After more than two decades of Republican rule, interrupted only by an ineffectual Jimmy Carter, Democrats were exhilarated in 1993 at the prospect of restoring the momentum toward a Great Society that had come to a dead stop after LBJ was undone by Vietnam. Even the early fiasco over health care reform was a sign that the new man cared.

But there was always another Bill Clinton, a Gennifer Flowers-chasing, low-rent undercurrent to his character that emerged to give Newt Gingrich and his merry men an opening for impeachment that hobbled the last years of the second Clinton term.

Then, for almost seven years of his post-presidency, we saw only the good Bill Clinton again, going all over the world to raise awareness and money to help the wretched of the world.

Now, in his wife's campaign for the nomination, here comes the other guy, trash-talking about Barack Obama and squabbling with reporters like a precinct pol rather than a former President of the United States.

Armchair psychology suggests he may be trying to over-compensate Hillary Clinton for the Lewinsky humiliation, but his behavior is not helping her campaign, only highlighting the difference between what he is doing and the dignified reticence of George H. W. Bush during his son's run in 2000.

What's even worse is that all this may giving voters pause at the prospect of having the two Bill Clintons back in the White House.

Bill Clinton, An Embarrassment

As if race and gender were not complications enough in this critical Presidential contest, we now have Bill Clinton stepping up to remind us of how devious and disruptive he can be.

For a year, he stayed dutifully in the background, but the man who can't help being Bill Clinton is now roiling his wife's campaign with the kind of hatchet work on her opponent that is normally done by an incumbent or aspiring Vice-President. In the process of Cheneying Barack Obama, he is outdoing Jimmy Carter in trashing the dignity expected of a former President.

It's dispiriting to see a former occupant of the Oval Office seeking absolution from Al Sharpton for parsing Obama's positions on the war in Iraq as a "fairy tale," the kind of attack usually assigned to a campaign chairman or anonymous aide like the one quoted as saying, "If you have a social need, you're with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool."

It's saddening to see the re-emergence of the man who used to be called Slick Willie in sliming Hillary's opponent while complaining about the "sanitizing" of Obama by the media.

Dignity has never been Bill Clinton's long suit and, under the pressure of Obama's surge, his panic is understandable. But it's a sad reminder to those who supported him of what comes with all that undeniable idealism and political savvy--a reckless need to get what he wants by seducing the world.

He dodged his own impeachment but, if he doesn't step back from the spotlight now, our problematic former President is going to wreck Hillary Clinton's chances for the nomination, let alone in a general campaign against someone with the unimpeachable character of John McCain.

If Bill Had Been Faithful to Hillary...

How different would the American political landscape look today?

The question is raised anew by the sight of the former President taking over the spotlight to try to save his wife's candidacy with trademark meaning-of-is-is talk about Obama's inexperience and his own opposition to the war in Iraq from the get-go.

"Maybe," Maureen Dowd suggests, "the Boy Who Can’t Help Himself is simply engaging in his usual patterns of humiliating Hillary and lighting an exploding cigar when things are going well."

The conjugal question comes up, too, in the new issue of Newsweek. Sally Bedell Smith, author of a book about the Clinton marriage, writes about the health-car debacle in 1993: "When Bill tried to make the plan more flexible, he had to defer to her, in part because of their implicit marital bargain, in which Bill ceded her power as a trade-off for his history of infidelity."

It's impossible to talk about Bill Clinton's character without running into a polarizing political buzz saw--vast right-wing conspiracy vs. moral depravity in the Oval Office--but the connection between the impeachment, the failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s and Al Gore's narrow defeat in 2000 are too important to be swept into the dust bin of history, particularly with the prospect of both Clintons returning to the White House.

Today's New York Times notes that "during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled."

A year ago, the former President reacted with fury to a TV mini-series portraying him as so distracted then that he failed to focus on the emerging threat of Osama bin Laden. Yet, the program's advisor was 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean, and there is evidence that Clinton might have done more about bin Laden if not for fear of public reaction that attacking him might be seen as a "wag the dog" diversion from the impeachment.

Replaying Bill Clinton's record as a serially straying husband would be mean-spirited and pointless now if his wife were not now claiming spousal experience as justification and preparation for her own presidency.

But, in that light, it's not only proper but necessary to ask, how different might our lives be today if Bill Clinton had managed to be a faithful husband during those White House years? And what kind of distraction could he be if voters sent the Clintons back there for another four years?

Bush's "Saturday Night Massacre"

The Nixon parallels keep coming. The latest Bush move to hide what happened in the firing of the U.S. Attorneys is a perfect match for the Watergate “Saturday Night Massacre.”

A New York Times editorial today notes “that if Congress holds White House officials in contempt for withholding important evidence in the United States attorney scandal, the Justice Department simply will not pursue the charges. This stance tears at the fabric of the Constitution and upends the rule of law.”

Just as Bush is now ready to hide his Administration’s wrongdoing with a misuse of the Justice Department, Nixon in 1973 attempted to fire the Special Prosecutor who was getting too close to the truth about Watergate.

On that memorable Saturday night, the Attorney General and his assistant refused and resigned. Nixon reached down to the third in line, Robert Bork, who did the bloody deed. (Bork’s eagerness later helped deny him confirmation for the Supreme Court.)

That was the beginning of the end for Nixon, whose lawlessness was laid bare for the entire country to see. Less than a year later, in the face of impeachment, he left office.

George Bush won’t have to fire faithful Alberto Gonzales, who will never refuse an order, but their political perversion of the Justice Department is becoming clearer with every move they make to hide it.

Bush won’t be impeached or resign, but he is certain to go down in history with the same stain of misusing Executive Power as his role model, Richard Nixon.

Hillary's Impeachable Appointment

At her press conference this afternoon, Hillary Clinton may have to answer a few questions about her announcement this morning that “Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Congressman Alcee Hastings have been named national Campaign Co-Chairs.”

Is this the Alcee Hastings who as a federal judge was impeached in 1988 for perjury and bribery by a 413-3 vote in the U.S. House of Representatives and went on to become the sixth federal judge in history to be removed from office by the Senate?

The same Alcee Hastings who earlier this year when Speaker Nancy Pelosi proposed his appointment as head of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence aroused so much protest that his name had to be withdrawn?

Beyond that, why would Hillary Clinton, of all candidates, choose to make an appointment that would renew discussion of impeaching a public official?

Just asking.