THE CLINTON LEGACY

Victor Bloom MD

I tried to make the point months ago that the Clinton approval ratings during and after the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal were at odds with reason. Indefatigable Clinton supporters were insisting that the Starr investigation was going too far, and that personal deviation had no influence on governance.

In short, Clinton admirers and defenders argued that the Starr investigation was the greater crime and that the president deserved privacy regarding his personal life. Supposedly the private life and the public life were two different and separate things. Clinton's lies to the American public were largely accepted as a kind of honorable and gallant effort to protect Hillary's equanimity, Chelsea's image of her father and Monica's reputation. His lies were also condoned in the effort to protect his legacy, one of steering the American economy to its roaring heights and promoting the Middle East peace process, which if successful, would eventually win Clinton the Nobel Peace Prize.

The detractors of William Jefferson Clinton were castigated by the first lady as a dark and terrible force, a vast, right-wing conspiracy. This force was fuelled by the Religious Right, supposedly zealous fanatics who wanted nothing more than to send young women to the back alleys and coat hangers for illegal and self-styled abortions.

The 'politically-correct' Democrats tried vainly to fuel a race war and a class war, pitting black against white and the poor against the rich. The Republicans were pictured as having no compassion for the poor and overly protective of the filthy rich. The Hollywood super-rich pictured the Republican super-rich as selfish and greedy--- this accusation despite growing evidence of Democrat abuses of campaign finance laws, obtaining money from illegal sources with questionable promises of advantage and using soft-money loopholes to finance candidates instead of parties.

But hey, it was argued--- that's American (dirty) politics. Both sides do it. Both sides have been doing it ever since. That makes it all right. Gotta get power. Gotta win power, Power for the People! In this case, The People are the poor, downtrodden and disenfranchised. The suburban middle class are no longer numbered among The People, and certainly not the rich. It was argued that the super-rich, who pay most of the taxes, should not get most of the tax relief. They don't need it. Who needs it? We need it! (There are more of us). Let's have more tyranny of the majority.

Recent news developments have revealed beyond a shadow of a doubt, as if there should have been any doubt, that the top echelon of Democrats cater to their own 'special interests,' who are also super-rich. Not only are they super-rich, but they have amassed great fortunes on profits from the sale and distribution of illegal drugs.

This is what the Wall Street Journal and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard have been reporting for many years. But the unwashed masses do not read the Wall Street Journal, and disregard books like "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton," by Evans-Pritchard, published by Regnery Publishing in 1997. The author is a British journalist who was on the White House beat and had extensive contact with Clinton and his buddies, who was able to write from 3000 miles away what American journalists could not write up close and personal. He was called the Woodward and Bernstein of the current era and described as one of the few British journalists in Washington who did not rehash the front pages of the Washington Post or the New York Times.

The editor of The American Spectator called Evans-Pritchard "one of the greatest journalists covering America. No one has developed wider contacts regarding the botches and scandals of American government. No one has written more elegantly and intelligently. His reporting for The Sunday Telegraph made Washington a lively place, and he was a source of scoops and disclosures that were a source of heartburn and misery for certain occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

A good friend of mine, a longstanding Democrat, interested and knowledgeable about military matters, was concerned about growing evidence that the past Commander-in-Chief was responsible for a growing laxity in the military. Consider what has happened during Clinton's eight year reign as high commander:

Disturbing evidence of command failure in the U.S. military continues to

accumulate. The commander of the nuclear submarine Greenville did not exercise

reasonable supervision and surveillance of civilian guests during an

emergency surfacing drill, and the commander of the destroyer Cole did not

take the most elementary precautions to keep hostile watercraft at a distance

from his ship. The security arrangements to avoid the Khobar Towers tragedy

were never put into place though they were recommended well in advance, and

the guards at the Marine barracks in Beirut carried unloaded rifles and were

helpless against the terrorist bombers. In Somalia, eighteen U.S. Rangers

were killed in an operation without U.S. Army backup or a feasible exit

strategy. For these command failures, investigating authorities have blamed

"the system". Perhaps it is time for "the system" to be analyzed rather than

used to distribute blame and responsibility. The president should demand a

thorough accounting.

George W. Bush has his job cut out for him.

Dr Bloom is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University School of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and on the editorial board of the Wayne County Medical Society. He welcomes comments at his email address--- vbloom@comcast.net.