Why was --and is – there so much hatred directed at the Clintons? Dirty politics between the parties has always been a given, but never have I seen so much vitriol directed against any other politician. The behavior of the Republican party during those years went way beyond viscious. It was like a childish grudge in which the Pubs would do anything – anything, no matter how underhanded – to unseat the prez.
How come? What did he do to deserve such unprecedented childish hatred? I won’t buy that it had anything to do with Monica or Whitewater, because it began long before then.
I think Clinton had the misfortune of being the first Democratic president at a time when talk radio (aka “hate radio”) was dominated by Republicans. They started out demonizing him just because he was a Democrat prez, then discovered that doing so got the troops all stirred up, and after that, the demonization took on a life of its own. The mainstream media took it up after that.
Of course, hate radio is still dominated by the Repubs. It will be interesting to see what happens when we get a Dem in the Prez’s office in 2004.
Conservative talk radio (aka “Radio programming that actually attracts listeners and advertisers, as oppossed to the few pathetic attempts by the Left to have a program that is not on NPR”) spread the news of Clinton’s utter sleaziness and criminality, but don’t lay the blame on them, they were just the messengers.
Conservative talk radio (aka “Radio programming that actually attracts listeners and advertisers, as oppossed to the few pathetic attempts by the Left to have a program that is not on NPR”)
Well maybe because the Clintons were seen as chances, they would say anything and do anything to stay in power. The travel fiasco, whitewater, not to mention his constant lying over the sex scandal, im from the UK so i have no political axe to grind here. To me he seemed like a sleaze bag, and i think she is extremely dangerous, they managed to worm their way out of quite a few sticky situations.
I think Bill Clinton inspires utterly irrational love AND utterly irrational hatred, just as John F. Kennedy did.
Neither Kennedy nor Clinton ever really DID any of the things their fervent admirers hoped or their most venomous detractors feared. Ask a Kennedy worshipper WHY he/she loves JFK so much, and you usually won’t hear a list of Kennedy’s actual accomplishments. You’re likely to hear a glowing description of all the wonderful things Kennedy “stood for,” all the great things he was “just about to do,” and above all, the way JFK made his admirers FEEL.
Bill Clinton made the liberal Baby Boomers and the Hollywood Left weak in the knees, too. Again, it’s NOT because of anything he actually accomplished. Rather, they loved him for what he “stood for.” and what he stood for was this: the rise of the Baby Boomers to power! To liberal Boomers, the election of Bill Clinton meant “We’ve made it! He’s one of us! The long-haired, pot-smoking, anti-war hippie generation is in charge now.”
Not surprisingly, that’s EXACTLY why so many on the Right loathed the man before he’d even taken the oath of office. Just like the Left, the Right looked at Bill Clinton and didn’t see a mere politician. They saw a symbol of the Sixties. They saw a pot-smoking, draft dodging hippie.
Neither side was ever inclined to judge Clinton by his actions. He was loved or hated almost purely for what he represented, in broad terms, to the people who observed him.
Yeah. It’s pretty silly of people to expect the President to keep his vows to his wife. After all, we all know that our personal lives have absolutely zero bearing on how we conduct ourselves publicly
Well, Bill Clinton gives me the creeps. It’s not a rational reaction; it’s just one of those weird, subjective feelings I’ve had since the Democratic primaries in 1992. Pure revulsion.
There is a certain group of people (led by Sidney Blumenthal) that will inevitably describe any criticism of or disagreement with the Clintons as “hatred”. To these people (and there some of them on these boards), the Clintons are nothing less than saints, and failure to acknowledge them as such is treated as blasphemy.
But I think it is more accurate to say that a large section of the population (not all of them conservative or Republican) were very disappointed by their, shall we say, mendacious tendancies, especially after the huberistic (if that’s a word) promise to run “the most ethical administration in history”.
Most politicians will spin, exagerate, stretch, and occasionally lie in the course of their terms. Nixon and LBJ both had enormous “credibility gaps”. But the Clintons are seen as being in a league of their own in that department.
There is a certain segment of the Right that views the Clintons, (and especially Hillary) as the devil incarnate. In this, they are more or less matched by a certain segment of the Left’s view of Bush, which is every bit as livid. But for most on the Right, Clinton is viewed as a man of great ability, who, due to character deficiencies, squandered his stock of the trustworthiness which is the foundation of political capital.
While I agree that adultery is not ok and even less ok for the president, it does not explain the hatred. If consider what other presidents did (Nixon jumps to my mind).
Anyway, nobody is perfect, any president of any country will have weaknesses. What we do is we chose the president who have weaknesses we tend to forgive over presidents with weaknesses which we can’t accept.
Personally I prefer a fornicating president than one who thinks he is in line with God while he starts his personal crusades against other countries
But that’s just the thing – it isn’t matched. Not by a long shot. Sure, there are Dems that despise Bush (including me), but so far there has been no independant council, no deep digging into past possible scandals, etc. Not to the extent that the Reps went to in the 90s. It was totally unprecedented.
Because they made deals with terrible monstrosities from beyond, bargaining their very souls to gain political power. How else do you think they won the elections?
Seriously, some of their political goals were things conservatives tend to despise, like the Hillarycare thing or various gun control laws. That and they just felt smarmy and political. That and Bill’s various sexual incidents - the general feeling among conservatives is - If his own wife can’t trust him, why should we?
The hatred pre-dated Monica and Whitewater. Hell, I remember a lot of right-wing vitriol being directed at Clinton before he had even wrapped up the Democratic nomination in '92. Monica and Whitewater were just handy justifications for pre-existing hatred.
The vitriol was generated by Republican media personalities and campaign operatives to try to keep Clinton from being elected, and once he was elected, the criticism grew ever more shrill as Republicans grew increasingly frustrated by their inability to bring Clinton down.
In the end, it was so shrill that only dogs could hear it.
Exactly. Kind of like the way I felt the last time I went to buy a used car.
For me the Clintons, esp Hilary, ooze that snobbish, intellectual, I-know-better-than-you attitude of the worst of the lefties. While you see this attitude sometimes in a few righties, it seems to be more prevalent on the left.
I’m always amazed when I hear people say that WJC was able to make them feel like he really cared. Whenever I heard him talk, I would reflexively put my hand on my wallet to make sure it was still there.
Perhaps the reason the Bush-haters haven’t been able to do the same is that Bush hasn’t given them quite as much ammunition as Clinton did.
Look at the more extreme faction of the anti-war protestors, and it’s pretty clear that their major gripe isn’t the specifics of the Iraq war, it’s that they really, really hate Bush.
