Oh Bill, could there be an ex-President as desperate as you to stay in the public spot light?
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Yesterday, after taking Wolf Blitzer on a delightful trip down memory lane where he regaled the news reader with tales of near misses by crazed conservative snipers during his Presidency, Bill Clinton postured himself as a veteran (no pun intended) in the war against murderous, right-wing, zealots.
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A frequent re-writer of history, Clinton explained that death threats against him during his tenure in the White House as the result of “white, southern, Protestants” who were the “heart and soul of the right wing movement” attacking him because they considered him a traitor to his “class.”
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Arguably, the most memorable of the Clinton would-be assassins (Francisco Duran) however pledged to kill Clinton, not because he felt that Bill abandoned his “class” (again, no pun intended), but because (depending on the source) he was a paranoid schizophrenic who wanted to rid the world of the “alien mist” emanating from the White House or he was a fame seeker who idolized John Hinckley Jr, the would be assassin of Ronald Reagan.
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Of course, Duran did have a bumper sticker on his pick-up truck that read something along the lines of “Those who beat their guns into plowshares end up plowing for those didn’t” and one that said “Fire Butch Reno,” a reference to Clinton’s divisive Attorney General, Janet Reno. The bumper stick slogan about Reno was a tag line of a popular, ultra-conservative talk radio personality Chuck Baker. Ergo, in liberal fantasy, Duran was the instrument of a right wing conspiracy.
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Clinton went on to reduce Obama’s lack of popularity to deep seeded racism and an irrational fear of change. “Obama symbolizes the increasing diversity in America… symbolizes the loss of control, of predictability, of certainty, of clarity that a lot of people need.” But in his attempt to smear the right as backwards, KKK members he actually got some of it right.
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As a kid, I grew up with the idea that a President was a sort of John Wayne character, a moral, unassuming, hard working man who was a steady hand at the helm. An American President was a person who was a protector of the citizens and a defender of the Constitution. But above all, the President was a strong voice of authority dedicated to preserving traditional values and ideals, safe guarding the ability for people to strive for the American Dream, while fostering thoughtful and rational progress. Americans went to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that our President had the watch and he would keep us safe and on track.
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Clinton, to some degree, and Obama to greater degree represent a figure diametrically opposed to that concept of an American President. Depending on your position, Obama is either veering radically off course (driving us into socialism) or is simply out of control. People do not feel confident that he has the ability or the desire to be that steady hand at the helm. He has proven in word and deed that he has no interest in protecting citizens or defending the Constitution. Even assessing his tenure generously, he has initiated change for change sake and has arguably done more to undermine American values, traditions, security, and ability to pursue the American Dream than any other President in history.
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Of course, according to Clinton, none of this is Obama’s fault. Our failure to understand what a “great” job Obama is doing (and what a fantastic job Clinton did) is down to a combination of our racism, Tea Party hate speech, and Fox News.
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But Clinton goes on to make some really interesting statements about the security of the country and the death threats against politicians. Clinton explains, “Since the early 70’s when we still had some left wing problems, by in large these have been systematically coming out of the far right.”
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Wow! Now that is news to me. Let’s just think about that for a second. Clinton contends that death threats against Presidents over the past forty years have been the result of a systematic effort from the far right. He says that “demonizing” public officials and in particular the President has been the very dangerous, anti-American providence of the right, going so far as to blame “birthers” and the Tea Party movement.
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I would be interested to find out which “far right” groups were responsible for the decade long demonization of George Bush. For the entirety of his Presidency, at every public event that he attended, he was met with signs and posters, even effigies, calling for his death. A movie, marketed as a “mock-documentary” cobbled together from archive footage, real news reels, and transposing the head of Bush onto an actor, called “Death of a President” portrayed the realistic looking assassination of President Bush, WHILE HE WAS IN OFFICE! Screened in movie theatres around the country and shown on prime time television throughout Europe, apparently the televised assassination of Bush didn’t raise the level of hate, at least in Clinton’s eyes, as do signs at protests demanding that Obama prove his citizenship or follow the Constitution.
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Clinton did half-heartedly acknowledge that there have been a few, random people on the left whose actions “may” have been seen as an attempt to incite hatred or suggest killing a President. However, anyone on the left who would act this way would have to be mentally deranged and not a representative of the feelings or actions of liberals in general.
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Some of those “lone” lefties who made death threats or uttered hate speech against Bush included Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry, who when asked on a national television show why he didn’t take his wife to New Hampshire to “kill two birds with one stone” Kerry responded “I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.” But I guess Bill didn’t consider the top Democrat in the country as a representative of the Democrat Party.
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It is quite interesting that much of the liberal media has taken to nodding an agreement with Clinton’s disingenuous assessment of the threat posed by disapproving words at a Tea Party rally. Yet, when CBS ran the words “snipers wanted” under President’s Bush during his televised acceptance speech, THAT was “humor” and a clear exercise in First Amendment Rights.
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Despite Clinton’s desperate attempt to stay in the media spotlight, the issue of threats, real and perceived is important. The liberal media, openly opposed to Bush and the War on Terror, used the anti-Bush placards seen at anti-war rallies to give the impression that the entire country was against the President and US foreign policy. Once people saw that the more outrageous their placards were, the greater their chance to be featured on television, it simply became a matter of one-upmanship. These ever escalating images are then broadcast worldwide and used to support the radical positions of enemies to the US. Is it any wonder why enemy organizations are emboldened when they see news reels suggesting that their acts of aggression against a President would be welcomed?
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While Clinton can point his finger at the Tea Party movement if that makes him happy, it is the media (all media) which bares the brunt of responsibility in escalating tensions. Thanks to the media, entire generations have grown up to believe that graphic death threats and burning effigies of a sitting President is an acceptable (even desirable) form of self expression. By choosing to be the purveyors of liberal opinion, dressed as actual information, the media is not only fanning the flames of hatred, they are alienating and vilifying a huge segment of the population who seek only to be heard and exercise the freedoms granted to them under the Constitution.
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Unfortunately, Clinton and Obama seem interested in the Constitution only when it protects them and their positions. As soon as people use the Constitution to exhibit opposition to Obama, apparently they become unhinged. To be fair however, during the interview, which took place just days before the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the fact that Clinton would use that dark event and attempt to link it to Tea Party protests makes him the most unhinged of all.
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