When Former Presidents Caper...
It’s always fun watching Bill Clinton torment his fellow Democrats; but as we found in our excavation of The Presidents Club, Obama is certainly not the first president to have to contend with a Surrogate Gone Wild.
There was Adlai Stevenson, freshly nominated in 1952 to challenge the incomparably popular Dwight Eisenhower, having to contend with an impossibly feisty Harry Truman, who just wouldn't seem to go away. Truman, a friend and admirer of Ike’s throughout his presidency, broke ranks in August that year when he concluded that Eisenhower had failed to stand up to the “moral scoundrels” like Joe McCarthy. “I knew him. I trusted him,” Truman confessed to his party faithful in the heat of the campaign. “I thought he might make a good president. But that was a mistake. In this campaign he has betrayed almost everything I thought he stood for. ”
That turned the campaign, the New York Times wrote, into “a bitter Eisenhower-Truman affair,” to the point of overshadowing Stevenson completely.
Of course, Ike still won in a landslide.
Next it was Lyndon Johnson’s turn, to torture Hubert Humphrey during the 1968 campaign. During that summer, Richard Nixon helped convince Johnson that Humphrey was “weak” and “disloyal,” desperate to break with Johnson over Vietnam. “When [Nixon] gets the nomination,” Johnson told an aide, “he may prove to be more responsible than the Democrats.” Humphrey was drowning, no money, no momentum; Johnson at one point refused to campaign for him in Texas. When the vice president proposed a meeting to make amends, he ran late and Johnson refused even to see him. Only late in the campaign, when Johnson came to suspect that Nixon’s camp was secretly sabotaging the Paris Peace talks, did he throw his weight behind Humphrey’s campaign. But by then it was too late.
It’s not only the Democrats who do this: Gerald Ford did not appreciate Nixon making a celebrated return trip to China right in the heat of the 1976 New Hampshire primary, when Ford faced a stiff challenge from Ronald Reagan. Nixon put a similar squeeze on George H.W. Bush in 1992.
But Democrats seem particularly adept at it. These stories, and a lot more, is all part of the Club's astonishing 70 year run.
I personally think that the wily Clinton has been up to something far more interesting and urgent -- and far more partisan -- than needling Obama or even setting the table for a possible run by his wife in 2016.
But I will save those thoughts for later today.
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Comments:
Re: When Former Presidents Caper...
I was just thinking about this issue today. It's becoming clear, I think, that Hillary partisans, including ones she's not married to, are becoming more outspoken in their opposition to the President. I'm not sure if it's just that they can't hold it in any more or if it's something more nefarious afoot. I just plan to break out the popcorn and enjoy it.
May '12
Re: When Former Presidents Caper...
You know, I really find it difficult to not crack a grin when Bill Clinton gets up to some of his mischief.
And I have to admire the fact that he set out to not be poor, and has made damned sure he isn't.
Carter drives me nuts. As a recovering Self-Righteous Loner, I find his pontificating over the top. And I wish to hell he would do the jobs he is asked to do and not try exceed the remit. That just ain't professional.
Oct '10
Re: When Former Presidents Caper...
Your thoughts for later today might just be a little conspiratorial, I take it. Not straight-shootin' ole Bill?! I'm looking forward to the post.
May '12
Re: When Former Presidents Caper...
By the way, this took cojones
http://www.tmz.com/2012/05/24/bill-clinton-porn-stars-tmz-live/
For the life of me, I cannot find a video of the original "If you've got it, baby, flaunt it" scene with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, with Mostel shouting the line out the window at a lady on the street in a fur coat.
Mel Brooks turning it into a strip tease went too far.
Like I said, Bill makes me laugh.
Jan '11
Re: When Former Presidents Caper...
When I look at the State Department, and especially the military, I see entrenched "establishments" that carry on, despite changes of leadership at the top. Congressional leadership has remained largely unchanged, especially in the Senate, for many years. The Supreme Court changes at a glacial pace.
So considering the functions of government (legislature, judiciary, defense, diplomacy, and the professional bureaucracy), we really have very little change. You could have written the Congress Club, or the Court Club, or the Commanders Club, and so on, and few people would have batted an eye.
The one real change-agent is the executive. I suspect that the one measure of presidential effectiveness is in how he can move those bureaucracies.
It seems that right after the 2010 elections, after just two years, Barack Obama gave up on trying to move the bureaucracies. Obama wanted to issue orders and he expected the bureaucracies to obey - and when they didn't, all he could do was whine about it.
I suspect that Clinton sees that surrender and it drives him crazy. Does Clinton have an ulterior goal? I don't know, but I'll bet he's frustrated with Obama's surrender.