Bill Clinton Bounces Back

Clinton Is Back, announces a New York Times editorial rather pompously, to which the only possible reaction has to be, so what else is new? Shameless people-just look at Denise Rich, gallivanting around town showing off her grotesque poitrine to all and sundry who carry a paparazzo's camera-do not react the same way normal men and women do after a scandal. On the contrary. They emerge with a strategy to deflect criticism by displaying a weakness, and most of the time it works.

Clinton is a master of this. He admits to a minor indiscretion (I foolishly worked too hard in the closing days and I might have misjudged things...) that gains him sympathy and respect for truthfulness. It then builds up a false intimacy with one's supporters and throws enemies off the track. It also distracts one's opponents from more important sins. The fact that Mark Rich has given or has promised to give millions in exchange is no longer "operative," in Watergate lingo.

Those who call for sympathy for an overworked president should remember that his lying under oath polluted the wells of justice and helped ruin many lives. If anything, Clinton should have been made a non-person by the media after his exit, this being a most austere penalty for a me, me, me egomaniac like the Draft Dodger. Not because it would do him any good, mind you, but because it would strengthen the belief that there is still some justice in the world. Our entire system of justice depends upon people outside the criminal classes understanding the solemnity of what they do when they place their hand on the Bible. Perjurers like Clinton mock the court, rendering the whole system unsafe.

Needless to say, to The New York Times and others of its ilk, this is rubbish. Clinton's perjury, obstruction of justice, prima facie violations of federal law in raising millions from foreign contributors, the sale of overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom, Travelgate, Filegate, Wag the Dog military actions to cover up crimes, sending out his shills to destroy the reputation and character of decent Americans, using the IRS to get raw data on his enemies, releasing FALN terrorists to gain votes for Hillary's Senate run and so much more-none of this matters to the liberal elite who are stinking up our culture. No Republican could have lasted six months with Clinton's baggage, which makes the claims of objectivity by the media a repellent lie. But there's more, much more.

As criticism fades, Clinton's trying to seek a major public role, according to the Washington Post. One of them will be encouraging racial reconciliation at home. Coming from a man who openly lied about black churches being set on fire by racist whites, that's a bit rich.

But everything about Bill and Hillary Clinton is a bit rich, pun intended. The Clintons and their cohorts have been claiming to have achieved things that they had nothing to do with since day one. Take the first back-to-back balanced budgets and surpluses since 1969. The balanced budgets came only after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, and not a second before that. Yet if one listens to the Clinton propaganda machine, Ronald Reagan, the real architect of the wrenching restructuring of the American economy, had nothing to do with it. In foreign policy, ditto. Clinton claims victory in Northern Ireland, a bad joke made worse by the surrender of the Blair government to terrorists in the IRA. The Middle East? Well, even Clinton cannot claim he brought peace to that miserable part of the world, but he sure as hell tried to pass the buck when the dead started to pile up.

Yessiree, Clinton is back, according to the Old Hag, which means we're back to showboating, claiming credit for everything that's successful, blaming others for everything that's gone wrong and perhaps raping a woman or two in the process of coming back.

And while I'm at it, The Washington Post and all the great and the good of Washington, DC, are still heaping praise on the recently departed Katharine Graham. The trouble is that I haven't read a word about the various Clinton crimes and illegalities her paper tried to sit on while she was at the helm. Would the sainted Kay have acted likewise if, say, Nixon had been found by a federal judge to have obstructed justice and suborned witnesses and had harassed one woman and maybe raped another? I'll bet my last devalued drachma that old Kay would have ordered the bloodhounds out to get the scoundrel under the penalty of instant dismissal without compensation. Kay Graham never took on the establishment under Nixon. She was the establishment, and took on a man who knew where she was coming from, bet against her and lost.

Clinton, alas, has managed to beat the game by fooling most of the people most of the time. If he had any integrity he would write a book and admit to everything: the lies, the destruction of those who opposed him because they believed in the rule of law, the selling of his country's secrets in exchange for funds. And then he would give the proceeds of the unquestionable bestseller to charity. But he's as likely to do that as I am to be declared grand marshal in next year's Gay and Lesbian Pride parade. The Clintons have lowered the bar, have besmirched American integrity for a long time to come and-unlike Faust-will never be punished for having sold their souls to the devil. Let the fun begin.