Bad Bill Clinton, Bad!

Let's sum up: According to Geoffrey R. Stone (“Bill Clinton's folly a party disgrace”), political discourse in the good old days was much harsher, and judged by that standard Bill Clinton’s recent remarks* about Barack Obama were “tepid.” In modern times, leading Democratic candidates have "for the most part...stayed above the slime." So shame on Bill Clinton for not carrying on this (quasi)tradition of the modern democratic party.

Mr. Stone apparently imagines the cringing servility currently exhibited by Democrats to be in a (largely imaginary) glorious democratic tradition of "mutual respect and robust but civil disagreement and debate." Having, at least in his mind, secured and maintained the moral high ground, it doesn't surprise him that Democrats "are particularly sensitive these days to any conduct that might undermine party unity and lessen the party's prospects for success in November." Really?

I would have said that “conduct that might lessen the prospects for success in November” was thoroughly descriptive of democratic leadership's behavior. What else should you call the determined efforts to be seen as the impotent enablers of a catastrophic leader?

Mr. Stone's article is an object lesson in the power of self-deception. Mr. Stone deceives himself that craven boot-licking makes Pelosi and Reid statesmen; and those two persons apparently sustain a similar fantasy, in spite of polling even lower in popularity than the most unpopular president in modern times.

Any elements of half-truth and omission in Clinton’s remarks (whatever they might be) are as unhelpful as they are anywhere else in political discourse. But a “personal attack and distortion,” “divisive and destructive behavior,” ruinous to democratic chances in November? Please.

I can’t make myself cringe over Bill Clinton’s supposed “conduct unbecoming” on the campaign trail. If it’s true that the Clinton’s, in the words of Mark Karlin of BuzzFlash, “have gone after Barack Obama with a ferocity that we have seen from neither of them in the last several years toward the Bush and Cheney Administration,” they rightly deserve our condemnation, but for following in the tradition of the modern democratic doormat, not for poisoning the otherwise oh-so-pure waters of democratic political discourse.

*Different commentators seem to have different remarks in mind when expressing their chagrin, moral outrage, etc.. These seem to be the main contenders:

(a) ‘Obama’s whole campaign is a fairy tale.’ But he didn't say that:
"Time's Gibbs repeated falsehood that Bill Clinton referred to Obama's candidacy as a 'fairy tale'"

(b) Clinton’s comparison of Obama’s North Carolina Campaign to that of Jesse Jackson’s in ‘84 and ‘88. The remarks about which Jesse Jackson said "Bill has done so much for race relations and inclusion, I would tend not to read a negative scenario into his comments."

(c) Clinton’s “hit job” remarks in reaction to Obama’s campaign document calling Hillary “the Senator from Punjab” ? Is the cavil at the use of the phrase "hit job"? because the document’s claims are so clearly meant to be understood in that fine old tradition of 'mutual respect,' blah, blah…?