BILL TRIES TO TAKE RAP FOR HILLARYCARE—ISN’T IT A BIT LATE FOR MARITAL GALLANTRY? OR, FROM WHITEWATER TO WHITEWASH
By
Ken Eliasberg
As I have oft noted, the Clintons never cease to amaze me; their capacity for chutzpah is without either limitation or parallel. As I have also pointed out, they don’t just insult your intelligence—they assume you don’t have any. Now, to add to that, they assume you have no memory. To what am I referring? Bill’s latest effort to not only pull his wife’s chestnuts out of the fire, but to engage in an act of revisionism that defies belief. What has he done now, that loveable scoundrel? He’s advised us that the Healthcare flap—commonly known as Hillarycare—was really not Hillary’s responsibility at all. That is, its failure was his fault and not hers. Wait a minute, wasn’t she in charge of that effort?
Why then shouldn’t its failure be laid at her doorstep? Bill fumbles and stumbles—no one lies more artfully (or more regularly) than Slick Willie—and comes up with some garbage about the effort’s failure having to do with inadequate funding (as if this was only discovered years after the effort was undertaken). Don’t ask me, this one is so preposterous—and so obvious, not to mention counterproductive—that, as noted, it pushes the bounds of honesty to a point beyond anyone’s capacity to believe it.
Why is it counterproductive? Because if Hillary wasn’t in charge of healthcare, what was she in charege of? And to what then can we attribute the experience she is always telling us that she has in such massive quantities.
This effort is noted in a New York Times column by Jeff Zeleny (11/9/07) in which Mr. Zeleny quotes Barack Obama’s reaction as follows:
“All I know is that part of the record she’s running on is having worked on health care,” he said, “so it’s kind of hard to gauge if one of her claims is to have experience in this issue to then suggest that somehow she doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it didn’t work.”
One of the Blogs, Sweetness-light.com, picking up on this theme makes the following interesting (and telling) observation:
“We noted this new tactic the first time it was floated back in September.
And we ask the same question we asked then again now. If Hillary didn’t
handle Healthcare, what on earth has she ever run—besides her mouth?
Oh, yeah, she also managed Bill’s bimbo eruptions. Even to the point ofillegally eavesdropping on private telephone calls. But when you think of it, wasn’t that an even more spectacular failure?”
Of course we all know what her experience is all about. What’s that? As Dick Morris has quite correctly advised us, Hillary is experienced at surviving. Otherwise, she has screwed up virtually everything that she was ever put in charge of, and there have been very few significant things where she was given any degree of responsibility (I shall detail these things at great length later in the year).
But the lie is not the most significant aspect of Bill’s assertion. After all, we have gotten used to the Clintons lying—it’s what they do best. What is amusing here, is Bill’s effort at gallantry—a chivalrous concern for his wife’s well being. Wouldn’t we all be much more impressed if, instead of defending his wife (who we are advised is quite capable of defending herself) he had demonstrated his concern in some manner other than sleeping with every Democratic woman that he could bed over the course of their courtship and marriage? Doesn’t that tell us much more about his concern for her and/or the nature of their union than this somewhat flimsy and belated excuse for her inexcusably bad management of the healthcare fiasco which delivered a Republican Congress to her husband?
Thus, his effort to front for her in this instance is much more than merely hypocritical, it is destructive in that it suggests 2 very telling things (1) she can’t defend herself, and (2) she really has no experience, if he is to be believed, because he was really in charge of Healthcare. Moreover, as noted, when you have cheated—flagrantly, in many instances—on your spouse throughout the course of your relationship, sticking up for her now (even if it were credible) would seem to be a day late and a dollar short. Or, as the old saying goes, I can’t hear what you say above the noise of what you do.