Copyright © 2001 by Ralph Robert Moore.

Print in HTML format.

Return to lately 2001.

The Clintons are becoming the Vietnam of the new millenium.

Much like our involvement in that country during the sixties seemed to drag on year after year, with no end in sight, each plodding step out sinking us deeper and deeper, ankles, knees, hips, it now appears these two tiresome people are going to remain on the front page forever, with no helicopters in sight.

Even dropping all charges against the ex-President hasn't helped, because he's quickly racked up all sorts of new outrages, from stealing White House china, to selling Presidential pardons, to billing us for some of the most expensive office space on the planet.

People do make mistakes in their life, of course, and part of each life is to learn from those mistakes, and become a better person as a result. But Clinton's only progress with his mistakes has apparently been to advance from getting blow jobs in the backseats of Arkansas state trooper patrol cars to getting blow jobs in the higher brag-quotient surroundings of the oval office (and not that I want to go into much detail about his evident preference when it comes to sexual encounters, but isn't it a bit interesting that he consistently chooses such a passive role during sex? John Kennedy, Clinton's idol, at least chose vigorous, face-to-face intercourse with his bitches, and he had a bad back).

What I find most astounding of all in this seemingly endless series of Clinton disgraces are the number of people who still fawn over him, and who apparently are willing to continue considering him one of our greatest Presidents, no matter how often he and his wife debase themselves.

Many of these same poor souls are also inexplicably angry over the fact that Clinton's choice to succeed him, Al Gore, his Vice-President, lost the recent Presidential election.

Of course, many of these people feel Gore did not lose at all, that the election was "stolen" from him.

The logic they use to reach this conclusion is self-serving.

Some argue Gore won because he received a higher percentage of the popular vote. This is true-- in fact, Gore received almost a half million more votes than Bush, his opponent, did-- but in America, the Presidential race is decided solely by the number of electoral votes received, and those were the rules both men ran under (by the by, I find it interesting that many of these same people argued before election night that the electoral vote should in fact be the only vote that counted, when it appeared likely from the polls that the situation would turn out reversed from what it did, with Bush receiving the majority of the popular vote, but the minority of the electoral vote).

Others argue that the only reason why Bush succeeded in winning the election is because of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bush's favor. Again, this is obviously true, and I have no doubt there were politics involved in the Court's decision. But people using this argument conveniently overlook the fact that in the Florida Supreme Court, where they would have wished the appeal process to stop, decisions were at least as politicized, to where some of the oldest, most liberal members of that Court gave scathing dissents to that Court's decisions in Gore's favor, and that Gore lost in every other court in Florida to which he took his case, nearly all of them presided over by Democrat judges. Is there anyone in the world who believes that if the situation had been reversed, with the Florida court being primarily Republican, and the U.S. Supreme Court primarily Democrat, that Gore would not have tripped over his feet racing to get his case before the U.S. Supreme Court?

Finally, there is the argument that the voters of Florida, at least the Democrat voters, were somehow disenfranchised, that their votes were not counted properly, or not counted at all. This, certainly, was the most curious argument of all, because it required Gore to take the stance that although people who voted for his opponent had no trouble casting their votes, his followers did. The essence of this argument, put forth by Gore himself, although not in so many words, is that people who voted for him were dumber than people who voted for Bush, in that Gore supporters were too stupid to read bold-face, large-font instructions that emphasized that voters should turn their ballot around after they made their selections to make sure the chads had fallen off, and that if the chads hadn't, to pick the hanging chads off, and too weak to push a stylus through something as virtually impenetrable as a piece of paper.

Mary and I watched the whole melodrama from November 8 on (and on and on), the court trials and press conferences and appearances by partisans on the Sunday morning TV talk shows. It was fascinating and frustrating. Both sides had valid arguments, but to me, looking at it dispassionately, the Bush side made more sense. November 8, results showed Bush had won the Florida vote, but by a vote so narrow the state's mandated machine recount took effect. Gore announced he was rescinding his concession until this recount was completed, which was entirely reasonable. The recount showed Bush still ahead, but by a narrower margin. At this point, it was certainly reasonable for Gore to insist on a manual recount. Again, if the situation were reversed, I have no doubt Bush would have insisted on one himself. Gore's great flaw though was that he requested a recount only in those counties where he believed he would pick up additional votes, rather than a statewide recount. Putting so obviously self-serving a request forward, that early in the recount process, is what did Gore in. Had he, immediately after the mandated machine recount, requested a manual recount in all 67 counties of Florida, it would have been impossible for Bush to oppose him. With that close a vote (and, indeed, a vote even closer after the first machine recount), public sentiment would have overridden the Bush camp's objections, and would have forced a manual recount of the entire state's ballots, for the simple reason that statewide recount in such a close vote made eminent sense, and was certainly the fairest way to proceed. So why didn't Gore insist on a statewide recount? The obvious reason is because he knew he would lose if all the votes, rather than just the votes in the heavily-Democratic areas he chose, were recounted (incidentally, as I write this, the Miami-Dade newspapers, in a joint effort with USA Today, in an independent audit, have in fact determined that Gore would not have picked up the votes he needed from the infamous 10,600 "uncounted" ballots in Miami-Dade county).

After what I've just written, some of you may be surprised to learn I chose Bill Clinton over the senior Bush in the 1992 election, and over Bob Dole in the 1996 election. I appreciated Clinton's stand in favor of legalized abortion, I admired the emphasis he placed on race relations, and I felt he was the better man, in both contests, to lead us into the Information Age. There was a lot I didn't like about him, the sleaze factor, including that taped phone conversation where he coached Gennifer Flowers on how to lie without "really" lying, but I was willing to accept those regrettable traits of his in exchange for a President who overall had the best interests of the Nation at heart.

Boy, was I wrong. But at least I admit it.

During the most recent race, there was no question in my mind. I chose George W. Bush. My choice had nothing to do with my changed feelings towards Clinton. Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman are dangerous men. Both were champing at the bit to impose even greater government control over our personal lives. Their record is particularly disgraceful on the issue of artistic freedom. Both men have a long history of favoring censorship of expression, Gore with the Internet, Lieberman with the film industry (Gore's wife, Tipper, has her own onus of trying to censor the music industry, and in what cannot be seen as anything other than racist, African-American music in particular). I also found it contemptible that Lieberman, despite his gainsaying that "every vote should count", went along with the Democratic party's efforts to disqualify as many overseas ballots as possible from the men and women who defend, and sometimes die for, our interests overseas. The entire Gore public relations blitz about his concern that "every vote should count" was the worse public hypocrisy in America in decades, on the same low level as his desperate, ungraceful, last-minute attempts to portray Governor Bush as someone who would bring our nation back to a time when an African-American counted as less than a full person. Clinton and Gore are both shameless, but Gore is shameless in a particularly unclean way.

I feel comfortable with Bush in the White House. Some people still want to believe he's not smart, but he's smarter than he's given credit for, much like Gore is not as smart as he's generally believed to be. Think back to Gore's visit to China, where he was manipulated into toasting the villains of Tienamen Square with pathetic ease. The communist overlords puppeted him to where they had him do everything except uncork the bottle. I don't agree with everything Bush has done at this point, and certainly don't like the degree to which he's introduced religion into the White House, but he has restored civility, and across-the-aisle cooperation, to an office that had been badly stained.

Finally, let me say three things.

Although I do not personally like Al Gore, nor his position on most issues, there is no question that he handled his defeat with extraordinary grace, honor, and good humor. The process must have been very difficult for him. He rose to the challenge, even in the most awkward of circumstances, and there were quite a few awkward circumstances, and I respect him for that.

Also, not all ex-Presidents, or indeed any other ex-Presidents, lower themselves or their office like Bill Clinton has. It's unfortunate we wound up with such a tacky twosome, such white trash, in the White House, and unfortunate that Hillary Clinton's win in the New York State senate race means we're going to have to see her lying, bovine face for the next six years. But they truly are the exception. One ex-President, Jimmy Carter, has in fact done more good for the world since leaving office, with his work with Habitats for Humanity, and the monitoring of elections in many emerging democracies, and other good deeds. Let's use him as the example of Presidents' behavior once they leave office. He's a good, decent, honorable man who seems to sincerely care about leaving this world a better place than he found it.

And last of all, the National Enquirer obtained, and published, in their October 10, 2000 edition, a photograph taken in the Lincoln Bedroom, in the White House. This was during the time when the Clintons rented rooms in our White House in exchange for monetary contributions. The photo is of Markie Post, the actress, and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a close Clinton friend for years. Abraham Lincoln, of course, was one of our most admired Presidents, the man who during one of our most difficult times as a nation persevered in his battle to rid slavery in America. I've never been inside the White House, but I consider it part of our national heritage, something which deserves some measure of respect, and dignity. The picture showed both women, Markie Post and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, caught in mid-bounce on the bed in Lincoln's bedroom, like they were in a dormitory, arms out, Post with her knees up, gleeful smiles on their faces.

They say you can judge a man by his friends. These two little shits were Friends of Bill.