OK, so you’re conceding that the Clintons don’t lie about important stuff. I’m good with that. To me, lying to get us into a war is much more significant than a thousand lies about what color of shirt you wore yesterday. But maybe that’s just me.
OK, but like many of the others have said, untruths about minor things are pretty much the universal currency of pols trying to make themselves look better than they really are.
Anyway, that “the Clintons lie like they breathe: easily and constantly” and “[n]one of the aforementioned…has anywhere near the Clinton’s history or reputation for dishonesty” is your assertion. Unless you can show somehow that the Clintons are in a league of their own when it comes to petty lies, there doesn’t seem to be much ‘there’ there.
I’d like Democrats who argue about Clinton’s honesty to defend a few things that, IMHO, really can’t be defended. The first is the 1996 campaign fundraising, which set a new standard for filthy money, and made shady characters like James Riady and Charlie Trie household names.
The second was the 11th hour pardons. I don’t think there is any question that many of these were sold, especially when you look at the behavior of Tony Rodham in that mess.
Frankly, I think most honest Democrats inclined to support Bill Clinton for policy reasons would be reluctant to support these. But I could be wrong.
Whereas George Bush’s 11th hour pardons were of people who might otherwise have testified against him for his role in Iran-Contra. How is that a higher standard of honesty?
All presidents pardon on the way out. Nixon was the only president that had to be pardoned. His little cabal of crooks and liars was unprecedented until Bush made them look good.
Sadly all pols lie. To be successful it seems to be a requirement. As they travel from state to state running they say things that will play well in the market . Often they are contradicted by what they said in earlier states. It is politics.
I never heard of anything about AF1, but the neocons newly in office made a big deal about how Clinton trashed the White House on his way out. People said the phone lines were down, rooms were destroyed, computers broken, etc. They really hyped it up for a while. And investigation was done on it, to see what had happened and who would have to pay for it. The result of the investigation? Nothing happened. There was no evidence of damage found. The whole thing was just never mentioned again.
You don’t hear much about the $80 million that Republicans blew trying to find some dishonesty in the Clinton’s background either.
I doubt that there’s more than a few GOP congresscritters that could withstand that sort of scrutiny nowadays.
Not Air Force One - she stole a couple of hundred grand in furniture and furnishings that were marked as gifts to the White House. She gave most of it back when she got caught. (Cite.)
Well, given that the subject of this thread is, specifically, the relative dishonesty of the Clintons compared with previous Republican administrations, it might have been relevant for you to include this quote from your linked article:
Oh, come now. You could have made the link to the thread yourself without accusing Shodan of being disingenuous. He was responding to a specific assertion by a specific poster, not the subject of the thread. With regard to the assertion he was challenging, that part was not, in fact, relevant.
