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Of course, the right views any talk of this "conspiracy" with a mixture of laughter and contempt. Unless one wants to accuse the Republican party of being a "conspiracy" or like minded conservative individuals and organizations working together to oust a President they believed to be corrupting the law, then the idea of any kind of secret cabal, plotting in the shadows to overthrow the government kind of loses its potency. It says volumes about both Hillary and Bill Clinton that they viewed the legitimate political activity of their opponents, most of which took place in the open and indeed, publicized to to the max as something dark and evil.
But this hearkening to the past by Clinton in his interview had a more contemporary goal; reminding Democrats and the nutroots of their shared outrage. It not only suits Clinton’s self image of the courageous Democrat standing in the breach beating back the evil Republicans who sought to bring him down (while opposing him at every turn in his anti-terrorism policies), it also rallies the left to a defense of his Presidency which may have taken a bigger hit than any of us realize thanks to the broadcast of ABC’s The Path to 9/11.
Indeed, whether the show has a political impact is beside the point; it certainly angered the ex-President who seemed eager to tee off on the bemused Wallace. The Fox reporter sat in his seat dumbfounded as the former most powerful man in the world wagged a beefy finger in his face and accused him of a "conservative hit job," a remarkable accusation given that Wallace had only asked one question about Bin Laden. Coupled with the off the wall suggestion that Fox was only doing the interview with him to assuage the supposed anger of their viewership who might be upset by Rupert Murdochs support of his climate initiative, and you have a portrait of someone so self-obsessed that one can only shake their head in disbelief that someone that enthralled with himself could ever have achieved high office.
The crazed lefties keep portraying the conservative majority in the electorate [thirty-four percent self-described as opposed to 21% "liberals" according to the New Yorker's Jeff Goldberg] as "conspirators" has got to be major league projection. It's always salutary to remember Clinton won in a fluke because of the Perot insurrection, which the MSM backed even after Perot accused North Koreans of sabotaging his daughter's wedding [now that's a conspiracy to cut your teeth on!] Clinton is less legitimate than Bush having scored under 50% both times in his weird national election career---despite spending all the Dem money in '96 on himself, assuring a Republican Senate and House. And then there's lying under oath. To oppose narcissists like this self-absorbed auto-fetishist is hardly conspiracy. Ann Althouse again fears that Billy Jeff's auto-eroticism will prevail:
But this country is full of people who aren't hotly partisan, who are put off by that strong stuff, and who need to see a demonstration of calm rationality. Now his over-the-top performance is being praised by those people who crowd around him -- that's the real love-in -- and he may succumb to their fawning inducements to hardcore partisanship.
And where is Hillary in all of this? Will she fall into the open arms of the hot partisans too? I'd like to think she's less susceptible to seduction. But it won't help in the long run if her husband inanely cozies up to the kind of people who watched him on Fox News and thought he was just great.
It's clear from reading the New Yorker piece on him recently that he is manic-depressive with a strong obsession on his own place in the center-of-the-universe. Maybe these energies could be channeled, as I have suggested before, in the SecGen job at the UN, which would fulfill his self-styled Ptolemaic role of sun high in the firmament.
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