Posted by
Doctor Demex on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 8:34:58 AM
Bill Clinton tried, but failed again, to bolster his reputation to
outpace Jimmy Carter as our worst former president. On Fox News
Sunday last, Chris Wallace got a career boost by asking President
Clinton a simple question that exploded into what the cynical media
types call "good television." In response to Mr. Wallace's
question about Mr. Clinton's terror-fighting effectiveness, the
ex-president appeared to lose his temper, accusing Fox of being part of
the vast right-wing conspiracy that his wife made up a few years
ago. Just because Fox News is not biased as far left as the other
news networks does NOT mean that it is on the right wing. Only
someone like Mr. Clinton would have us believe something that silly.
Mr. Clinton's narcissistic outburst will not improve how history views
him. Even if the Clinton administration did not take the al-Qaeda
threat as seriously as it could have, and in retrospect probably should
have, the fact is that nobody in the Western world except a handful of
the cleverest analysts were concerned about a coordinated Islamic
terror movement over the last 20 years. It was not until the 9/11
attacks that the dot connections became obvious. What will hurt
Slick Willy most about his tirade is that he tried to defend himself
with bald-faced lies about how vitally concerned he was about Osama bin
Laden. Self-aggrandizing lies pulled out of thin air we have come
to expect regularly from Mr. Clinton's vice president and Mr. Wallace's
Harvard classmate, Al Gore, but this performance was a new low, even
for Clinton. To his credit, he said he tried and failed. To
his greater debit, that was also a lie, for he failed to try. And
need it be mentioned that blaming others for his problems is a classic
symptom of pathological liberalism?
Speaking of Chris Wallace:
Mr. Wallace has come a long way from when he interviewed me in 1981
about a goldfish that had disappeared from the birdbath in the foyer of
Congressman Melvin Price's office on the third floor of the Rayburn
House Office Building. The disappearance occurred sometime
between the election of Ronald Reagan and his inauguration, and Mr.
Wallace, a political correspondent in NBC's Washington Bureau, was
dispatched to investigate. What Mr. Wallace was supposed to find
out was whether the fish could possibly have been stolen by evil
Republicans in a bizarre ritual to celebrate their victory.
I admit to being a bit apprehensive when Mr. Wallace arrived
unannounced with his cameraman, because he looked just like his father,
whose sensationalistic reports on 60 Minutes every Sunday night would
keep our office busy answering mail from gullible viewer-constituents
all week. Back in those days, the only reason I tuned in to 60
Minutes was to know what our mail would be about that week.
Fortunately, Chris was not Mike.
Had I been more like many of my colleagues in other Democrat
congressional offices, I might have taken the opportunity to join the
NBC conspiracy theorists in making a mountain of this pitiful
molehill. But since I was not a jackass, I told Chris there was
nothing to this story. The fish probably died and disappeared
through one of the holes in the fake rocks cemented to the bottom of
the structure. Chris seemed relieved, because he knew that the
whole thing was silly. Again, fortunately, Chris was not Mike.