Instead, of course, history will show that Bill Clinton ended up as one of only two presidents to have been impeached, the only president ever to have been sanctioned by a court of law, and the first to be fined and rebuked by a federal judge for giving “false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process” and “undermine the integrity of the judicial system.” Or, as Richard A. Posner, chief judge of the 7th Circuit, sums it up, Wild Bill's illegalities were “felonious, numerous and nontechnical” and “constituted a kind of guerrilla warfare against the third branch of the federal government, the federal court system.”
And there's more to come. Chinagate bag man James Riady has just pleaded guilty to funneling foreign funds to the Clinton campaign, Judge Willard Proctor has set Jan. 22 as the kick off day to begin hearings to decide if Bill Clinton is unfit to hold an Arkansas law license, and Independent Counsel Robert Ray is sounding like he'll indict Clinton for obstruction of justice.
With the obstruction of justice charge, the penalty is imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine of not more than $5,000, or both. With the matter of the illegal overseas funds, Riady has agreed to pay a record $8.6 million criminal fine and come clean about the allegations of Chinese espionage, about whether the $100,000 slipped to Clinton friend Webster Hubbell was a payment for silence and about the limousine ride with Bill Clinton where he reportedly arranged to deliver an unlawful $1 million to the campaign coffers.
Regarding the super-lucrative limousine ride, Bill Clinton, naturally, has told federal investigators that he has no “specific recollection of what the conversation was, or this fact of the car ride.” That is, of course, the same Bill Clinton who was surreptitiously taped in 1991 by torch singer Gennifer Flowers, giving tips on how she could keep the hot stuff under wraps and side track any taxpayer who might ask how she ended up feeding at the public trough as the administrative assistant for the Arkansas Appeal Tribunal: “If they ever hit you with it, just say no and go on. If everybody is on record denying it, no problem. There's nothing they can do. If everyone kinda hangs tough, they're just not going to do anything. They can't, if they don't have pictures.”
Hey, no pictures, no problem, kinda cool, whether it's Chinese money, bribes, blatant lies, shady stock trades, compromised troopers, rape accusations, drug deals, tax fraud, cleaning out an S&L, obstruction of justice, missing draft files, missing cats, missing billing records or shredded witnesses.
With a view straight from the inside, Brian Lunde, a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee and a former Clinton strategist in Arkansas, comes down on the side of seeing Bill Clinton as a self-absorbed narcissist: “In the end, Clinton's whole presidency was really about him and his needs. 'Putting People First,' his 1992 slogan, has really been about putting Bill first.”
Long before Monica, for example, it was Air Force One, idling on a runway at Los Angeles International for 45 minutes, tying up runways at a cost of some $80,000 to commercial flights, so Bill Clinton could get a just-right $200 Hollywood haircut from Christophe of Beverly Hills.
In the end, with no purpose bigger than his own pleasures, Bill Clinton's presidency became what literature professor Paul Cantor at the University of Virginia calls “just an act, and ultimately a hollow sham,” a presidency that the Washington Post now calls “oddly superficial.” And aggrieved. Republicans, Bill Clinton told Esquire, should apologize for impeaching him. He was, even in the spotlight, with cameras flashing, his motorcade running red lights and trumpets blowing when he entered a room, still the victim.
He had, after all, schmoozed and lied and kicked his way all the way to the top, to the very place where he'd traveled with Boys Nation in 1963 to shake the hand of John F. Kennedy and, still, it wasn't enough. There was a kind of emptiness to it, a cheapness. He never became JFK, and Monica wasn't Marilyn.
The legacy? In terms of party politics, Democrats had 102 more House seats than Republicans in 1992; now they have 11 fewer. In 1992, Democrats had governors in 28 states, including New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Florida, and controlled 25 state legislatures to 8 for Republicans. Eight years later, Republicans controlled one more legislature than Democrats, 17 to 16, and Democrats held 10 fewer governorships.
And the parting words from his hometown newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “Bill Clinton's not all that complicated once you see through all the Clinton clauses, sworn testimony, and other impedimenta. The thing of it is, he seems to believe his story more than anybody else. Like he's trying hardest to convince himself. The tears almost come to his eyes, like self-pity seeping out. What a gift. We bet he sleeps like a baby. He's not like everybody else. Or, as we say in these latitudes, he's a piece of work.”
(This article can also be found on WorldNetDaily.com).
