Our Erstwhile Embarrassment in Chief

For the last few weeks, the Democrats have been making much merry at the prospect of a visit to NJ by President Bush for a GOP fundraiser. They undertook a campaign of asking Republican legislators if they planned to attend, the upshot, of course, being that Republicans should be embarrassed of the President.

Deliciously, the State Dems have now revealed the headliner for the Governor’s gala, none other than the embarrassment-in-Chief, Hizzonor, William Jefferson Clinton.

Bill Clinton boasts not a single ethical bone in his body. He completely and utterly lacks principle. But don’t take my word for it; as a partisan, I can hardly be expected to offer an unbiased assessment. Consider, say Bob Kerrey, who called Bill Clinton an "exceptionally good liar" and who opined to the effect that if one disapproves of Clinton’s position on a particular subject today, don’t worry, because he’ll have a different one tomorrow.

Clinton’s fundraising prowess is legendary – for, among other reasons, that he’s not especially choosy from whence he raises said funds. Just this past week, it was revealed that he took millions in consulting fees – and his wife took hundreds of thousands in "free" travel – from a firm accused of selling personal information about vulnerable seniors to scam artists. In one of his last official acts in power, he pardoned a notorious fugitive tax evader. Never mind that he lost his law license for deliberately lying to investigators (but lying’s OK, even under oath, in sex harassment suits, right?). Indeed, his choice of associates calls his judgment into serious question, with dozens ending up doing time or fleeing the country. He almost makes McGreevey’s merry bunch of profiteers look tame by comparison.

When even Clinton’s friends, like leftist mogul David Geffen, contend that he (and his wife) lie "with such ease, it's troubling", it’s appropriate to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, they know about what they speak.

Certainly, Bush’s policies offer much room for disagreement, mostly from the right. His immigration policy is essentially indistinguishable from that of Ted Kennedy. His spending levels make one yearn for the old days of divided government, when a Republican Congress – perhaps for purely partisan reasons – felt obliged to check Bill Clinton’s preferred excesses. His creation of a wholly unnecessary and massive governmental prescription drug program simply cannot be justified. And – think what one will about the motivation for going to war in the first instance – there seems to be general agreement that, tactically, his administration’s prosecution of that enterprise has been less than exemplary.

The Left describes Clinton’s tenure as one of "peace and prosperity", betraying their typical carelessness with language. Peace? Hmm. Here I was thinking that the definition of "peace" – vis a vis Americans, anyway – is a time in which American forces are not engaged in combat. Perhaps the Left forgets about the engagement in the former Yugoslavia. American forces were in combat for months; hardly sounds like "peace". Not, mind you, that Clinton deserves opprobrium for involving American forces there; far from it. It represented one of the few highlights of his Presidency. (And Republican support for that action – allowing politics to end at the water’s edge – stands in marked contrast to the Democrats’ shameless and disgraceful politicization of such matters)

Prosperity? Well, there, they’ve got me. After a very rough start, in which the economy barely muddled along -- in part due to Clinton's Corzine-McGreevey-like instantaneous breaking of his campaign promise not to raise taxes -- from 1995 through 1999 or so, the economy perked along quite nicely. If the commencement of that "prosperity", in the middle of Clinton’s first term, seems curious, it happens to coincide with the election of a Republican Congress, which passed tax cuts and curtailed the spending desires of Clinton and his wife. Indeed, one can hardly imagine the massive disaster which would have ensued had Clinton actually gotten his wife’s way, and nationalized 1/7 of the economy through an absolutely insane national health insurance proposal.

OK, Presidents get the credit – or the blame – for things which happen on their watch, and the economy, mostly, did rather well. But Clinton did essentially nothing to effect those salutary circumstances. With the exception of retaining Greenspan as fed Chairman, not a single Clinton policy had the slightest positive effect. Welfare reform helped, of course, but Clinton only reluctantly signed it, essentially under duress, having twice vetoed essentially the same bill.

Clinton’s sexual cattiness merits little notice, but query how many other campaigns employed operatives to handle "bimbo eruptions"? But he treated his wife with base contempt. Perhaps only because no one ever expected better of him was his treatment more favorable than that accorded to (say) Bob Livingston.

None of which is to say, incidentally, that I – or many other Republicans – "hated" him. Of course, one can certainly point to excesses – including several investigations of dubious merit – but, mostly, Republicans shook their head and clucked. As President, he called to mind Eric Stratton rather than Abraham Lincoln. Most Republicans wish profoundly that they never heard of Monica Lewinski, never saw a black beret, and never heard of cigars being used that way. They felt duty bound to impeach him, not because they wanted to – everyone realized it was a political non-starter – but because having a confirmed perjurer as the chief law enforcement officer of the country should give anyone indigestion.

But are the Democrats embarrassed by this highly accomplished liar, this consort of crooks, rogues, and rascals? Of course not. Instead, they will mine his massive fundraising capacity to great effect. Republicans charged $300 to sit with the sitting President; the "Party of the People" will charge their Fat Cats $1500 to hobnob with Bill. Just imagine all the common folk who emerge from their limos, gather at the gala, sip champagne out of crystal flutes, and nibble caviar, crediting Bill with creating a national economic boom for which he bears absolutely no responsibility, while consorting with the architects of unparalleled economic disaster in NJ.

Clinton, bless him, was essentially irrelevant for the last six years of his presidency. Facing Republican majorities, he could do little harm. Not so the Trenton Democrats. The folks who gather to rake in megadollars will be the scriveners of the most disgraceful tax system in the county; of borrowing so egregiously illegal that even a sympathetic Supreme Court couldn’t stomach it; of spending on a scale so massive as to defy imagination. The Trenton Democrats, who make "political ethics" an oxymoron and who have presided over a 40% increase in property taxes, about which they have done precisely zip.

But, as with their beloved ex-President, the Trenton Democrats are impossible to shame. To them, it’s not about policy, it’s about power. And money. Shame is a problem for those who believe honesty matters, for those with principles. For the Clintons and the Trenton Democrats, those are utterly foreign concepts.

They’ll raise a whole lot of vershnagels from those who truly believe in Huge Government and from those who work for it. And they’ll probably keep their Legislative majorities for the foreseeable future.

But when the crisis comes – and it will – a whole bunch of freedom-loving NJ ex-pats, observing the carnage from PA, FL, NC, and other more freedom-loving locals, will look back at their former home, smile sadly, shake their heads, and observe: "what did you expect when you elect people who think Bill Clinton was a good president"?