“It is time for new leadership that understands the way to win a debate with John McCain or any Republican who is nominated is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq.” Senator Obama on January 30, 2008

Keith Olbermann refers to it as the “Obama rebuttal,” the argument that Senator’s Clinton’s “experience and that of Republican rival, John McCain led to their participation in the worst American foreign policy mistake in decades if not centuries, a single Senate vote in 2002, authorizing the use of military force in Iraq.”

The statement is accurate, the way a broken clock is accurate twice a day.

It looks at a single date, October 11, 2002, when both Clinton and McCain both voted for the Iraq resolution, and then ignores everything they said and did thereafter. If you look at the entire record, the pre-war positions of Hillary Clinton and John McCain were polar opposites. Any suggestion otherwise is more than a little misleading.

Clinton’s position was substantially similar to that of Hans Blix, who believed that Saddam would never allow intrusive WMD inspections without the threat of force. But once the inspections were under way, neither Clinton nor Blix saw any basis or pursuing military action. McCain’s position was like Dick Cheney’s. He didn’t care about inspectors or evidence of WMD. He just wanted war, period. He demanded as much in his speech at the Center for Strategic & International Studies on February 13, 2003, one day before Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei presented the U.N. with their initial findings – that there was nothing there. And, just like he does today, McCain justified his stance by perverting history.

Obama and the media prefer to suggest some equivalency between the pre-war positions of Senators Clinton and McCain, conflating the October 2002 vote with the decision to invade in March 2003. As I’ve explained before on HuffPost, this is less than entirely honest. Republicans and their lapdogs have been pulling this same stunt since 2004. Here was the Republican party line used against presidential candidate John Kerry:

“[L]arge stockpiles of mass destruction do not exist. Saddam may have had the intent, the interest, but they’re not there. John Kerry is obviously going to try to take advantage of it. Every time he does you hear George Bush and Dick Cheney saying, `Well, that’s interesting senator, because you voted to authorize the war.’ … [T]hus far, what President Bush has been able to say is, “Well, I believed they [WMD] were there. Former President Clinton believed they were there. John Kerry believed they were there. If it was a mistake, it was an honest mistake.” That’s his view.” Tim Russert on Today, September 17, 2004

“That’s his view,” said Russert. But what about the facts that Russert kept from NBC’s viewers? John Kerry did not “vote to authorize the war” without exhausting all other means of peaceful resolution. On October 2, 2002, John Kerry said, “The vote that I will give to the president is for one reason and one reason only, to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections.” [emphasis added] Nor did John Kerry “believe” that the WMD were there at the time of the invasion. As he said, on March 14, 2003, “Nothing I have seen in the intelligence over the last years suggests to me that in terms of threat to the United States that there is, at this moment, such a compelling rationale that there is a distinction of weeks or months.” In other words, Kerry said Blix should have all the time he needed.

Back then, Russert blurred this clear-cut distinction to make the Republicans look better. Now, Olbermann and others blur that same distinction to make Hillary Clinton look worse.

Read John McCain’s speech at the Center for Strategic & International Studies to get the full effect of his verbal grandiosity and hysteria – very much at odds with that aw-shucks persona we see on television. And then compare it with Senator Clinton’s statements at the time.

“Today, new threats to civilization again defy our imagination in scale and potency. I believe Iraq is a threat of the first order, and only a change of regime will make Iraq a state that does not threaten us and others, and where a liberated people assume the rights and responsibilities of freedom.
…
“Proponents of containment claim that Iraq is in a “box.” But it is a box with no lid, no bottom, and whose sides are falling out. Within this box are definitive footprints of germ, chemical and nuclear programs, and from it has come blood money for Palestinian terrorists, and support for the international terrorism of al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam.”

The evidence for these “definitive footprints of germ, chemical and nuclear programs,” from which comes “support for the international terrorism of al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam,” was nowhere in the NIE. (A “footprint” means there’s an industrial infrastructure, which is more substantial than a few suspicious trucks or aluminum tubes.) Here’s what Mohamed ElBaradei reported, with his usual 100% accuracy, on the “definite footprint of a nuclear program” one day after McCain’s speech:

“As I have reported on numerous occasions, the IAEA concluded, by December 1998, that it had neutralized Iraq’s past nuclear programme and that, therefore, there were no unresolved disarmament issues left at that time.”

Senator McCain then gave his phony analytic framework:

“For a policy of containment to work, as it did in the Cold War, four components are necessary: reliable allies; a clear goal with a consistent doctrine; the economic and military capability to enforce the doctrine; and the political will to support the demands of the policy. …We enjoy none of these assets today with regard to Iraq.

“Today, Iraq is growing stronger, not weaker, under a policy of containment. We are also dealing with a regime driven more by the unstable character of a risk-taking mass murderer than by the caution that mutually assured destruction encouraged in an enemy with a more intelligent appreciation of its vulnerability.
…

“The United States does not have reliable allies to implement a policy to contain Iraq. West Germany was a front-line state in the Cold War, as Saudi Arabia is today a front-line state and key “ally” in the confrontation with Iraq. During the Cold War, West Germany welcomed the deployment of hundreds of thousands of Americans and hundreds of military installations on its soil; placed few restrictions on American forces stationed there; worked hand-in-glove with us to conduct military training and exercises; and permitted us to station tactical and theater nuclear missiles on its soil sufficient to defend Western Europe.

Except the U.S. military was stationed on land, sea and air throughout the Persian Gulf, in Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, United Arab Emirates and in Saudi Arabia. Backstopping U.S. force, if necessary, were Israel’s significant military resources.

Then there’s McCain’s delusional insinuation that Iraq’s military power was ever comparable to that of the Soviet Union. McCain was ignoring that other dirty little secret, which was apparent to anybody who took a cursory look. The U.N. sanctions worked. Notwithstanding the kickbacks to Saddam, which involved skimming off the top, Iraq’s industrial capabilities had been decimated by the sanctions imposed after the first Gulf war. As ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council,

“[D]uring the past four years at the majority of Iraqi sites industrial capacity has deteriorated substantially due to the departure of the foreign support that was often present in the late ’80s, the departure of large numbers of skilled Iraqi personnel in the past decade and the lack of consistent maintenance by Iraq of sophisticated equipment.”

Senator Clinton’s position was far more prosaic, given her affinity for the facts. For her, military action was always subject to one simple question, can we avert the threat of WMD by some other means? Here’s what she announced to the media:

“Hillary Clinton tells Irish TV she is against war with Iraq,” Irish Times, February 8, 2003

“Hillary Clinton prefers ‘peaceful solution’ in Iraq,” Associated Press March 3, 2003 “[Clinton said the US] should continue its attempts to build an international alliance rather than going to war quickly with Iraq…[I]nspection is preferable to war, if it works, the New York Democrat said.”

Senator Obama, like any honorable politician, goes after his opponent by framing the past in a way that’s advantageous to him. Fair enough. But neither he, nor the media, are recounting the complete story in an entirely fair and evenhanded way.

————-

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First of all, you have to ask, ‘Is history a reasonable basis on which to make a statement?’… We’re not talking about opinion here. Chris Matthews on Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough January 11, 2008

True enough. Chris Matthews did not support his argument with opinion. He flat out lied. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. He gave it a lot of thought and preparation.

Matthews was defending some comments about Hillary Clinton that triggered widespread revulsion, most notably from the women on The View:

Let’s not forget, and I’ll be brutal, the reason she’s a US Senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front runner, is that her husband messed around.

That’s how she got to be a senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win it on her merit, she won because everybody felt, “My God, this woman stood up under humiliation, right?” That’s what happened! That’s how it happened. Matthews on Morning Joe January 9, 2008

Matthews’ thesis is that “in the midst of all this humiliation,” a phrase he couldn’t repeat often enough, Hillary Clinton’s poise, toughness, and “heroic” campaigning caused people to feel sympathy for her. But if you believe Life’s a Campaign, then it’s oxymoronic to say Hillary shows toughness and poise and then say, “She didn’t win it on her merit.”

According to Matthews. the turning point in Hillary’s viability as a candidate occurred during September – November 1998, when she campaigned for Chuck Schumer in New York.

Back in 1998 in the midst of the terror that he was involved with in that intern, he was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, and then he faced conviction in the U.S. Senate, in the midst of all that in the fall campaign of 1998, Hillary Clinton went out and heroically campaigned for Chuck Schumer. Matthews on January 11, 2008

Remember, “We’re not talking opinion here.” So how many falsehoods did you find? Here’s my count:

1. Back in 1998 … he was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives

False. The House did not impeach Clinton until after the November 1998 election in lame duck session.

2. …and then he faced conviction in the U.S. Senate…

No one seriously thought that a conviction, which required a 2/3 vote, was either politically or arithmetically possible. Democratic Senators were uniformly against impeachment and a number of Republican Senators had severe misgivings. (On the final vote, the Republicans favoring conviction failed to attain a simple majority.) After Americans watched Clinton’s videotaped testimony, the percentage in favor of even beginning impeachment proceedings was 31%.

3. In the midst of the terror that he was involved with that intern…

Terror? (Listen on Joe Scarborough how Matthews emphasizes the word “terror.”) On September 25, 1998, Bill Clinton’s approval rating was 67%. It had shot up from 61% right after the public got a good hard look at Bill Clinton’s videotaped testimony about his relations with Ms. Lewinsky.

The apparent resurgence for Mr. Clinton has come swiftly — and is surprisingly pronounced. Not only has the months long slide in his personal ratings halted but, in a marked shift from only a week ago, Americans also trust him more as a leader, like him more, are less inclined to think he committed perjury before the grand jury and increasingly believe that the scandal is a private matter that has little to do with his job as President… 78 percent of Americans, and 65 percent of Republicans, said [the videotape] should never have been released. People said they objected to the committee’s prying into what they regard as a private matter and that it was unnecessary to make public salacious details about sex. In addition, 65 percent of Americans said Republicans in Congress were unfairly trying to weaken the President and the Democrats; 39 percent of Republicans saw it that way as well.
The New York Times September 25, 1998

Also, 60% of Americans said it was appropriate for the President to refuse to answer questions about his sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. At the time, House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s approval was 18%.

4….went out and heroically campaigned for Chuck Schumer…

What’s so heroic about campaigning in friendly territory? At the time, Bill Clinton had a 69% approval rating in New York, and the Ken Starr investigation was red meat for the Democrats. To drive home the point, the Schumer campaign aired a TV spot reminding voters that his Republican rival, Al D’Amato, investigated Whitewater. Schumer proudly campaigned aside Bill Clinton as well as Hillary.

Oh, and in case anybody forgot…

In a stunning rebuke to the capital’s taste for scandal, voters on Tuesday handed Democrats surprising victories in key Senate and governor’s races and held out the possibility of closing the Republicans’ slim majority in the House. St. Petersburg Times November 4, 1998

But here’s the kicker:

If you go back and look at the newspapers, which I did last night to confirm all this, you will find glowing accounts, especially in USA Today, I picked it up on the front page, by Kathy Kiely a great reporter, about how it was her poise in standing up in the midst of that humiliation where she was able to go out and campaign politically and show her strength in New York state, up and down that state for Chuck Schumer. And then she gets a call two or three days later from our old friend in New York Charlie Rangel…

The story ran, “It was her poise in the campaign in the midst of all this humiliation that made her a candidate for the senate.” So if you don’t accept the history then accept the syllogism, “Had Hillary Clinton not been a United States Senator right now because of that election would she be a serious candidate for president?”

You can’t argue that she’s a United States senator because of the fact in which, in humiliating circumstances she showed her toughness and elicited one whale of an amount of sympathy from people for having the guts to go out and campaign in the midst of all that humiliation…Hillary would not have been a U.S. senator and not have been in eligibility to run for president had that humiliation not been thrown upon her.” Matthews on Morning Joe, January 11, 2008

There was no such story in USA Today. Matthews fabricated the quote. More specifically, he revised Kathy Kiely’s story in USA Today, dated November 9, 2000, to fit his insupportable claims. Kiely wrote:

Clinton’s poise under pressure impressed New York Democratic leaders, who began wooing the president’s wife to make a bid for the seat of the retiring Moynihan, who was first elected in 1976. Her months on the campaign trail transformed the first lady from a reluctant public figure into an energetic and thick-skinned politician.

The word humiliation shows up nowhere. The word sympathy shows up nowhere. The article does not say that Hillary’s poise was the deciding factor for New York Democratic leaders. Think about it for a second. Do you think other attributes – name recognition, affiliation with an extremely popular President, familiarity with the ways of Washington, being a quick study and a hard worker – might be deemed more important than poise? Here’s what Knight-Ridder printed on October 28, 1998:

After making more than 50 appearances at fund-raising events and rallies through the year, Clinton campaigned full time in the week before the election, traveling to New York, New Jersey, Florida, California, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

She’s a huge drawing card,” said Michael Tucker, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which helps finance Democratic Senate candidates.

She is perhaps the strongest voice we have in terms of firing up the base. She’s always been that way, she’s always had a lot of base appeal. She appeals to working families, organized labor, minorities, teachers. [Emphasis added.]

Now consider the second sentence in Kiely’s passage, “Her months on the campaign trail transformed the first lady from a reluctant public figure into an energetic and thick-skinned politician.” Is that factual reporting or literary license? Before September 1998 Hillary was a reluctant public figure? Please.

This brings up another fatal flaw in Matthews’ assertion of historic fact. Contemporary political analysis in a newspaper is not the same thing as historic fact. A historic fact is something beyond dispute. No one disputes that the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003. But many dispute that the invasion, which ignored widespread looting, was an unqualified success. Citing a newspaper account describing the Iraq invasion a success does not, in and of itself, prove a historic fact.

As for going back and checking with the newspapers, I did a search on Factiva covering the period in 1998 when Hillary campaigned with Schumer. The search was for “Schumer” and “Hillary” and “Clinton” and “campaign” and “New York” and “sympathy” and “humiliation.” Total results: zero.

Matthews’ challenge, “If you go back and look at the newspapers,” is a favorite stunt of the Bush White House. Check out Tony Snow’s press conferences. Nine times out of ten, whenever Snow uttered the words “if you” followed by a reference from the past (e.g. “if you go back and look at…” or “if you actually take the trouble to read….”) the reference was bogus. Michael Chertoff used the stunt a few days after Katrina, when he said, “I remember on Tuesday morning [August 30] picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.’” There was no such headline. Chertoff lied and no one called him on it.

Getting back to the reaction from The View, I think Scarborough and Matthews missed their point. I think they were offended by the mean-spirited way in which Matthews devalued Hillary’s accomplishments. “[T]he reason she may be a front runner, is that her husband messed around… She didn’t win it on her merit…” It’s analogous to saying Colin Powell sat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff only because of affirmative action. In that regard, Matthews’ remark is no more defensible than Ann Coulter’s comment that, “If [Max] Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. Senator in the first place.”

Once again, Chris Matthews pulls out all the stops to portray the Republican narrative as absolute truth. We saw it in his attempt to say that Bill Clinton did not speak out against the Iraq invasion. And we saw it in his attempt to conflate Hillary’s vote on the October 2002 war resolution into the decision to invade Iraq. As he has for the past decade, he argues that the Lewinsky affair central to the lives and careers of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Except, according to the polls, vast majority of Americans, then and now, did not see it that way.

If Barbara Walters wants to debate history and debate politics, and what’s happened in this country in the last 50 years, if she wants to go on Jeopardy and see what she knows and what I know, I’ll take her on… Matthews, January 11, 2008

Hey Chris, I’m willing to call your bluff and take you on. I’m not famous and I’ve never worked in politics. But I majored in History. And I sure know the difference between a fact and a lie.

Every op-ed writer seeks to broaden the public discourse about his chosen topic, so I accept the invitation, extended last Sunday, for a national conversation about your visit to a faith healer.

First, kudos for acknowledging your need for a spiritual detox. And in furtherance of that laudable goal, let me offer a reality check. You write:

After scrutinizing my body language, [the faith healer] breaks the bad news: my intimacy chakra is blocked.

Sorry, that’s not news, or at least it’s not news to those of us familiar with your writing. Think about it. You asked your faith healer, “Was I a nun in a past life?” You wrote a book called Are Men Necessary? which opens with, “I don’t understand men. I don’t even understand what I don’t understand about men.”

And most conspicuously, you have 12-year body of work writing political columns at The New York Times. During that tenure, you have never ventured far from three broad overarching themes: trivia (witness your Sunday column), sarcasm, and trivial sarcasm aimed at the Clintons. Not only your body language but your words themselves signal major intimacy blockages.

The dynamics of a sarcastic personality were examined recently in Psychology Today:

Though they may not be aware of it, sarcasm is their means of indirectly expressing aggression toward others and insecurity about themselves. Wrapping their thoughts in a joke shields them from the vulnerability that comes with directly putting one’s opinions out there.

Voila. And while some men are put off by strong successful women, don’t kid yourself. You are not conveying strength. (This may be what you don’t understand what you don’t understand about men.) In addition,

Albert Katz, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, has recently looked at the wisecrackers’ focus on one-upsmanship from a biological perspective, showing that people whose brains are best equipped to understand sarcasm tend to have aggressive personalities. Subjects who scored high on aggression tests showed different patterns of brain activity in response to sarcasm than those who did not… ‘Sarcasm is definitely a dominance thing–it’s related to being top dog,’ Katz says, both for initiators of sarcastic banter and those who catch on and offer a retort.

Maybe that’s why you and the president share a fondness for disparaging nicknames. There’s a reason the London Guardian labeled you the “woman of mass derision.”

Now I suspect we’re getting into some touchy territory here – you never know where a faith healer may lead you – but hear me out. Did you ever consider that your intimacy chakra might become unblocked if you dropped your obsession with the Clintons’ marital life? You should schedule a follow-up session with your faith healer to confirm the diagnosis, but a quick review of your columns over the past four months shows repeated and unmistakable signs of psychological projection.

Projection is where you attribute to others your own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts and emotions. In this case, you neurotically attribute to Hillary Clinton your own inability to connect emotionally with men, and therefore feel a need to portray the Clintons, whose marriage has endured, like Lord and Lady Macbeth.

Before anyone reduces this thesis to “Maureen’s-jealous-because-Hillary-has-a-husband,” let me assure you that some men appear similarly afflicted in the psychological projection department. A few conspicuous examples:

[If you find these guys too much of a distraction Maureen, feel free to skip past them so we can get back to you.]

Andrew Sullivan

[Senator Clinton] harkens back to the ’90s. I think she’s been a very sensible senator. I think, in fact, it’s hard to disagree with her on the war. But when I see her again, all my–all the cootie vibes sort of resurrect themselves…I’m sorry. I must represent a lot of people… I actually find her positions appealing in many ways. I just can’t stand her. Andrew Sullivan on The Chris Matthews Show, January 28, 2007

Hillary resurrects cootie vibes? Seven years ago, Sullivan gained notoriety as a menace to public health, when, as an HIV-positive man, he placed an ad soliciting unprotected anal intercourse with strangers. Yet when he harkens back to that time, he associates Senator Clinton with the slang word for body lice.

He finds her positions appealing in many ways but he just can’t stand her. Hmm. Doesn’t sound very rational. Maybe he can’t stand to admit that his writings in support of the Bush administration have all been discredited. Maybe he can’t deal with the fact that he shares positions with people he attacked with vitriolic fervor a few years earlier. And maybe he projects on to Senator Clinton his own personal hypocrisy.

Carl Bernstein

Promoting his new Hillary Clinton biography, Carl Bernstein used his standard talking points on Charlie Rose. He kept pounding home that Hillary was not authentic. He and Rose used some form of that word (“authenticity”, “inauthentic”) about 32 times.

ROSE: Should she be president?

BERNSTEIN: I think that she should be president if she becomes authentic again.
….
ROSE: Do you believe somebody between now and November of 2008, who you judge not to be inauthentic, is going to become authentic? Do you?

BERNSTEIN: I think that, look, we have had a catastrophic presidency for eight — six years now. And the nature and extent of this catastrophe we’re going to be paying for, for generations. And it is about time that we find a way to elect somebody who is authentic and moves away from a broken political system.

Assuming that “inauthenticity” is a meaningful character flaw as opposed to an it’s-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder type of shortcoming, what did Bernstein offer as proof?

BERNSTEIN: She flunked her bar exam and never admitted it to anybody for 30 years. But what it says is, OK, what does that mean? If the people I talked to who are closest to her — Nancy Hernreich, one of her closest friends, Deborah Sale, Web Hubbell — they didn’t know she had flunked the bar exam. And Williams & Connolly lawyers, where she said, oh, well, they wanted to hire me — she couldn’t have gone to work there unless she was going to be a paralegal or took the bar again, and she never did.

So it comes back to this question of there is an inauthenticity is a word that I have used, not in the book but in discussing it, about the way she presents herself, what she stands for, and the reality of the record.

I guess she never admitted it to anybody until she wrote about it in her autobiography. And I thought she moved to Arkansas with Bill, so that passing the D.C. bar would have been a moot point. I never flunked the bar exam but I got a C- in statistics, a fact I have never shared with my closest friends (till now). Does that make me inauthentic? As I see it, Hillary failed to mention something from the past that was unimportant.

But Bernstein thinks otherwise. As for being qualified to judge the authenticity of Hillary’s public and private persona in the D.C. fishbowl, well that’s something Bernstein has a feel for, since there are a few striking parallels with his own life.

Bernstein got married within the same 12-month period that the Clintons got married, and Bernstein’s wife was pregnant when Hillary was pregnant. And like Bill was years later, Carl was unfaithful. In fact, the adulterous affair which received the most notoriety inside the beltway, prior to the Monica Lewinsky saga, was between Margaret Jay, a former BBC journalist who at the time was both wife to the British Ambassador and the daughter of Britain’s Prime minister, and Carl Bernstein. The British Ambassador apparently knew what was going on; he was screwing the nanny, who became pregnant. (By the way, wouldn’t this make great movie for HBO?)

The affair was an open secret among le tout Washington, except to Bernstein’s wife, Nora Ephron, and the two separated in 1979, when she was 7 months pregnant. By contrast, 1979 was an especially happy year for Hillary, when she had Chelsea, became partner at the Rose Law firm and Bill was elected governor for the first time.

And like the Clintons, Bernstein was not happy when others wrote about his personal life. His ex-wife Nora used her personal pain as a source of humor in her very funny novel, Heartburn, that was very loosely based on her life in Washington. Heartburn was optioned for a movie, and here’s where the issue of authenticity comes up. Bernstein threatened Paramount with a lawsuit to prevent the filming Nora’s novel. Think about it. What kind of writer can profess to be an authentic journalist if he seeks prior legal restraint on the free expression of a work of fiction? (A legal aside: It is possible to defame a person in a work of fiction, though I don’t believe that protection applies to public figures like Bernstein.)

So here’s what it looks like. Bernstein projects onto Hillary his own public embarrassment caused by an ex-wife who wasn’t so tightlipped, and since he can’t deal with his own hypocrisy, he labels the Senator as inauthentic.

But back to you Maureen…

Just when I thought I was out, the Clintons pull me back into their conjugal psychodrama. 12/23/07

They pull you back in? Sorry, dear, you’re projecting again. Since Labor Day, about half of your columns have been devoted to trashing Hillary. And it’s the old crap over and over. No kidding, it’s really obsessional.

At the breakfast, a reporter asked Mr. Penn if the campaign has polled to figure out how to proceed if Bill’s personal foibles once more take Hillaryland hostage. 10/21/07

As Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, once told me: “She’s never going to get out of our faces. … She’s like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won’t stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president, just leave me alone.” 9/30/07

If elected, would the old Hillary pop up, dragging us back to the dysfunctional Clinton kingdom? She is speaking in a soft, measured voice in these final days, so that, as with Daisy Buchanan, you have to lean in to listen. But is she really different than she was in the years when she was so careless about the people around her getting hurt by the Clinton legal whirlwind that she was dubbed the Daisy Buchanan of the boomer set? 1/02/08

Did you actually read The Great Gatsby Maureen? Daisy married Buchanan, a dolt, because he was rich and privileged, instead of Gatsby, who was born poor. Daisy is a very passive and frivolous character who never thinks out the consequences of her actions. Daisy could not be more different than Hillary. As for getting hurt by the legal whirlwind, if Kenneth Starr found nothing, what basis do you have for putting the blame on Hillary?

And here’s a chestnut we haven’t heard a thousand times over the past 15 years…

Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar. 9/30/07

Right. And what would Christopher Dodd be doing? Or Elizabeth Dole? Or Teddy Kennedy? Or Cokie Roberts? But for nepotism, who would have ever heard of Indira Ghandi? But for nepotism, Katherine Graham had no material to write a book that won the Pulitzer Prize, Margaret Chase Smith would have been an obscure housewife and Donald Trump would have been a real estate agent in Queens.

Get over it and get a life, Maureen.

By the way, I had an idea for a play. It’s something like Stuff Happens, written by David Hare, who compiled verbatim remarks by Donald Rumsfeld for a theatrical indictment of the war in Iraq. My play would be a brief one-act set in a Georgetown living room, and the characters would be you, Sally Quinn, Kathleen Parker and a fictional magazine writer who profiles all of you for the French edition of Marie Claire. The interviewer asks what you all think of the Clintons. Then everything else would be your own words. It would be like an updated take on The Women by Clare Booth Luce.

Interviewer: What is your sense of Hillary Clinton as a person?

Dowd: A combination of Tony and Carmela Soprano. Like Carmela, who was rewarded with jewels, watches and building permits for her husband’s infidelities with his goomahs, Hillary, too, found a way to profit from her husband’s failings and flaws… And like Tony, Hillary is so power-hungry that she can justify any thuggish means to get the prize.”

Interviewer: You see Hillary’s political rise as a reaction to the Monica Lewinsky scandal? Was the scandal that important?

Quinn: Certainly Clinton is not the first president to lie. But the scope and circumstances of his lying enrage Establishment Washington.

Interviewer: You don’t think the special prosecutor was overzealous?

Quinn: Independent counsel Ken Starr is not seen by many Washington insiders as an out-of-control prudish crusader. Starr is a Washington insider, too. He has lived and worked here for years. He had a reputation as a fair and honest judge. He has many friends in both parties. Their wives are friendly with one another and their children go to the same schools.

Interviewer: Now, Salon had reported that you bear a grudge against Hillary because in 1993 she declined your invitation to a society luncheon.

Quinn: Ridiculous. There’s just something about her that pisses people off.

Interviewer: She’s a woman surrounded by woman advisors. What does that say?

Parker: It makes a case with a certain demographic. And I noticed the picture on the front of the Washington Post the other day showed her with all of these women and her crew, and did you notice there was only one blonde out of about 15 women? So it’s sort of–I thought that was very telling.

[Editors note: Both Quinn and Parker were raised in the South. And they are both blonde.]

I started the play and then thought, why would anyone care? The Women is a period piece and its appeal was very much a reflection of its time. The play opened on Broadway at the beginning of 1937, when the world was in turmoil and a lot of Americans were hurting. But here was this group of privileged self-involved women who seemed untouched by Franco’s aerial bombing of Madrid, Japan’s expanded invasion into China, and a sudden severe contraction to the US economy that boosted unemployment by 7 million. These women were more focused on spreading nasty gossip about an idealistic woman with an unfaithful husband. That seems so different from the world of Washington today.

Which reminds me, at the Yearly Kos convention last June, I asked Sidney Blumenthal why Washington insiders held on to their strong visceral dislike of the Clintons. Blumenthal said that Washington is a very hierarchical and status-driven place, and they considered Bill Clinton – a Rhodes scholar – the equivalent of trailer trash. Which reminded me of a quote from a woman who, until she died, held your position as Queen Bee of Washington’s Hillary-haters:

Look at Bill Clinton’s mother, as opposed to George W.’s mother. Is your mother a barfly who gets used by men? Or is your mother a strong woman who demanded respect for her ideas and always received it?

But at the end of the day Maureen, who was a better mother? Barbara Bush or Virginia Kelley? And who has stronger emotional connections with others? You or Hillary?

_________________

My bio at Huffington Post, where this article was originally published:

For over 20 years, David has been a banker covering the energy industry for several global banks in New York. Currently, he is working on several journalism projects dealing with corporate and political corruption that, so far, have escaped serious scrutiny by mainstream media. He is trained as a lawyer.

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