Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

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Smoking a disqualifier for presidential candidates

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner is nothing if not candid.

He told Jay Leno this week that he likes smoking cigarettes too much to be president of the United States. He won’t quit the nasty habit. So there, he said. He ain’t going to run for president.

John Boehner Likes Smoking Too Much to Be President

I’m glad that smoking is now seen as a deal-breaker for anyone who wants to run for the highest office in the land. Think of it. The president has a Presidential Council on Fitness; he names a director to run the organization. Smoking is a key component in the message the office delivers, which is to say that children shouldn’t smoke, because the habit can kill you.

The current president used to smoke but has quit — he says. No one has yet confirmed it independently, at least I’m not aware of any confirmation. Even so, no one ever would see Barack Obama lighting up.

It didn’t used to be this way. President Franklin Roosevelt famously smoked cigarettes with that cigarette holder cocked in that famously “jaunty” angle. President John Kennedy was known to light up a stogie in the Oval Office while pondering the issues of the day. President Richard Nixon didn’t smoke, but first lady Pat Nixon did — although no one ever saw her in public; same thing was said of Jackie Kennedy, come to think of it.

President Bill Clinton? Hmmm. How do we handle this one? I guess he smoked cigars, but as we learned to our national disgrace, he did other things with them that didn’t require them to be lit.

Speaker Boehner declaration takes one national politician out of the hunt for the presidency in 2016. Other issues may derail potential candidates. I’ll give the speaker credit, though, for his forthrightness on a disgusting habit that in this day and time has no place in the Oval Office.

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Political foes can become friends

These kinds of stories give me hope that all may not be lost in U.S. politics.

Former first lady Barbara Bush says she “loves Bill Clinton.” She might not agree with him politically, but she is truly fond of the 42nd president of the United States, who in 1992 defeated the 41st president — Barbara’s husband, George.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/195946-barbara-bush-i-love-bill-clinton

Democrat President Harry Truman detested his successor, Republican Dwight Eisenhower. They reportedly grew closer as the nation mourned the assassination of Ike’s successor, John F. Kennedy.

GOP President Gerald Ford and Democrat Jimmy Carter waged a fierce campaign in 1976. Carter won, but the new president and his immediate predecessor forged a warm friendship that lasted until Ford’s death.

Carter never developed that kind of relationship with Ronald Reagan, who beat him in 1980, nor did Reagan form a bond with Walter Mondale, whom he clobbered four years later in a landslide re-election.

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton’s friendship seems to be real. Mrs. Bush talks about her husband becoming the father Clinton never had. She says President Clinton visits the Bushes annually. “We don’t talk politics,” Mrs. Bush says.

You hear about these kind of inter-party friendships from time to time. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, had a warm friendship with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. Talk about coming from differing ideologies, parties, lifestyles, cultures … you name it. Yet they were big-time pals.

One of President Barack Obama’s closest friends in the Senate today is Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. You can list all the differences there, too, and wonder how these men — and their wives — have become so close.

Too little of this kind of camaraderie exists today, with partisans on either side viewing the other guy as the enemy, rather than just a political adversary.

Take a lesson, folks? Given the nastiness of the campaign her husband waged against Bill Clinton, there’s reason to believe you can make nice with your foes.

One word of advice, however: Don’t ask the 41st president his feelings about H. Ross Perot, the third man in that 1992 campaign. His feelings for the Texas billionaire aren’t nearly so magnanimous.

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Spotlight gets hot as it shines on Gov. Christie

Welcome to center stage, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Now that he seems to have implied an interest in running for president of the United States in 2016, the media are looking at him with intense attention to everything he says or does, or doesn’t say or do.

That’s how it goes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/christie-bridge-controversy-exposes-a-gop-rising-star-to-new-scrutiny/2014/01/11/f49dee40-7aed-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html

This is nothing new in politics. The media are trained to do this kind of thing, irrespective of party. My friends on the right can spare me the “liberal media are out to get Christie” nonsense.

I will remind them of what happened to Sen. Barack Obama when he ran for president in 2008. You’ll recall the Rev. Jeremy Wright mess and his association with a Church of Christ pastor who said God should “damn America.” Also recall all those questions about the senator’s birth and whether he was constitutionally qualified to hold the office of president. Let us nor forget, either, the associations that young Barack had with the likes of William Ayers and other members of the infamous Weather Underground anti-Vietnam War crowd.

The media were quick to pounce all over him.

John McCain got the treatment during the 2008 campaign, as did Mitt Romney in 2012. Bill Clinton’s love life became media fodder during the 1992 campaign. Michael Dukakis and convicted murderer Willie Horton were joined at the hip — so to speak — during the 1988 campaign because of a furlough that Dukakis granted Horton while serving as governor of Massachusetts; the furlough ended tragically, if you’ll recall.

The media’s mission is to report these things, to expose candidates to the people who will decide whether they are the right fit for high office.

The bridge fiasco in New Jersey is a legitimate news story insofar as it will determine whether Chris Christie is a bully. It also might determine if he is truthful when he said he didn’t know in advance that key staffers ordered the lane closures of the world’s busiest bridge to get back at a political opponent.

The media will tell the story. It will be up to individual Americans to determine for themselves if it’s a story worth telling.

That’s the way it is, the way it’s been and the way it always will be.

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Presidential term limits need to go

Jonathan Zimmerman, a history professor at New York University, says it well.

Let’s repeal the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which limits presidents to two consecutive terms.

He wants to allow presidents to serve as long as the public can stand them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/end-presidential-term-limits/2013/11/28/50876456-561e-11e3-ba82-16ed03681809_story.html

His Washington Post essay lays out the case quite well. As one who opposes congressional term limits, I understand where Professor Zimmerman is coming from. Term limits already exist, in the form of elections.

Only one president ever has been elected more than twice consecutively: Franklin D. Roosevelt won a third term in 1940. He was elected to a fourth term in 1944, but died shortly after taking the oath in early 1945. His cousin Teddy was the first president to seek a third term. He served two terms consecutively after becoming president in 1901, after President William McKinley was murdered. He was elected in his own right in 1904, then walked away in 1909. He sought the presidency in 1912 as the Bull Moose candidate, but the office went to Woodrow Wilson.

Zimmerman takes note of President Obama’s low poll standing. It’s highly unlikely, at this moment at least, that he would be elected to a third term if he had the chance. Indeed, most presidents burn out after two terms. President Reagan lamented late in his second term that he would have liked the chance to run again. President Clinton said much the same thing near the end of his presidency.

The 22nd Amendment was enacted in 1947 by a Republican-controlled Congress to head off what some feared would be an imperial presidency. They didn’t like that FDR served seemingly forever. But he was the voters’ choice — four elections in a row!

As Zimmerman notes, even the Father of Our Country, George Washington, disliked the idea of term limits. “I can see no propriety in precluding ourselves from the service of any man who, in some great emergency, shall be deemed universally most capable of serving the public,” Washington wrote to Marquis de Lafayette, according to Zimmerman.

Let these people serve until the voters say otherwise.

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POTUS’s apology nothing new or unique

President Obama’s critics are making much hay — too much, if you ask me — of his recent apology to those who’ve had their insurance policies canceled as the Affordable Care Act kicks in.

He said he’s sorry. Big deal.

He’s not the first president to apologize to Americans. He won’t be the last.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_HEALTH_OVERHAUL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-11-08-03-56-20

* Former President Richard Nixon apologized in 1977, three years after resigning his office in disgrace over the Watergate crisis. He said he was sorry for letting people down. He apologized to Americans across the land for the mistakes he made.

* President Ronald Reagan, while not actually apologizing, acknowledged he “misled” Americans about whether he was selling arms to Nicaraguan rebels, aka the Contras, in exchange for deals to secure the release of Americans held prisoner in Iran.

* President Bill Clinton expressed “deep regret” over his inappropriate relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He didn’t actually apologize during that nationally broadcast mea culpa, but we got the point.

OK, so President Obama’s rollout of the ACA has gone badly. The website wasn’t prepared fully to handle the volume of Americans seeking to enroll. Then came the cancellations of insurance policies, which the president said wouldn’t happen. “You can keep your health insurance” if you’re happy with it, he told us. Remember?

My thought is this: The ACA is going to be tinkered, fine-tuned and improved as we move farther into its implementation. Do I understand all of it? No more than its ardent critics understand it. I’m not yet willing to toss it aside and declare it a disaster, as they have done.

As for the presidential apology, it’s been overblown.

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Debt ceiling: non-negotiable

Former President Bill Clinton is an expert on dealing with Republican members of Congress.

That’s if you consider today’s crop of Republican lawmakers in the same league as those with whom the 42nd president dealt. Still, Clinton offers some sound advice to the 44th president, Barack Obama: Don’t negotiate on whether to raise the debt ceiling. It must be done, Clinton said, and the nation must avoid defaulting on its financial obligations, no matter what.

http://thehill.com/video/sunday-shows/325345-bill-clinton-tells-obama-to-stand-firm-on-debt-limit

The federal government appears headed for a shutdown on Tuesday. Miracles do happen. Don’t count on one to save this train wreck. Mark it down: A shutdown is going to cost the Republicans — perhaps dearly — in the 2014 midterm elections.

The bigger battle awaits. On Oct. 17, the United States’s ability to borrow money to pay its obligations runs out unless the Congress increases the amount of money it can borrow. Republicans are playing hardball over that as well.

Bill Clinton told ABC News this morning that his own negotiations with congressional Republican leaders were “very minor.” The government shut down in the mid-1990s and voters reacted angrily to the GOP’s tactics. “We didn’t give away the store and they didn’t ask us to give away the store,” Clinton told ABC’s George Stephanopoulous. True enough, but the Republicans then were a more reasonable bunch than those with whom Barack Obama is dealing.

Of course, Clinton’s problems with the GOP congressional leadership didn’t end when the government re-started. He ended up getting impeached by the House — and acquitted in the Senate.

If you look only at Clinton’s dealings with the House GOP on budget matters, though, you have to conclude that he had it right and congressional Republicans had it very wrong.

Today’s GOP leadership needs to wise up to the calamity that’s about to occur if they force the government to default on its debts.

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Why doesn’t POTUS come here?

A headline in the National Journal online edition asks: Why won’t Obama visit North Dakota?

It’s a valid question, given the oil boom that’s changing North Dakota and beginning to change the nation’s energy strategy.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/why-won-t-obama-visit-north-dakota-20130825

But I can answer the question posed by the headline and the article written by the Journal’s Amy Harder. He won’t go there for the same reason he doesn’t come to West Texas. There’s no political advantage for the president.

What’s more, West Texas is resuming its own energy boom, in the Permian Basin, not to mention the growth of the wind-energy industry throughout the Panhandle.

Presidents, though, are the supreme political animals. Democratic presidents quite often don’t bother coming to regions of the country where they lack popular support. That would be, um, West Texas and North Dakota.

Conversely, do Republican presidents spend a lot of time visiting places such as, say, the Bay Area of California, or Boston, or the Pacific Northwest? Hardly.

Frankly, I think quite a few West Texans — not to mention North Dakotans — would appreciate a presidential visit to talk up the industries that are fueling our manufacturing might and keeping our vehicles on the road.

And I also believe a Democratic president could get a warm welcome here. Do you remember the reception another very high-profile Democrat — one William Jefferson Clinton — got when he came to Amarillo in 2008 to campaign for his wife, then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination? The Civic Center’s Grand Plaza Ballroom was packed beyond capacity.

The nation’s energy future is, indeed, changing, as the National Journal article points out.

A presidential visit would be a welcome event to call attention to the hard work that’s under way out here in Flyover Country.

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GOP sets new impeachment standard

I have concluded something sad about today’s Republican Party: It has reset the standard for impeaching the president of the United States.

Some GOP members of Congress are so intent on impeaching President Obama that at least one of them admits to having dreams about it. For what reason? What precisely are the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the president committed that warrant such a drastic act? They aren’t saying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/us/politics/ignoring-qualms-some-republicans-nurture-dreams-of-impeaching-obama.html?ref=politics&_r=0

Suffice to say that it appears — to me, at least — that Republicans, led by the tea party wing of their party, have decided impeachment is one way to get rid of a guy they dislike, whose policies they detest.

It has gotten me to thinking about whether this new standard would have come into play during previous recent administrations. Was it plausible, therefore, to impeach:

* President Ford, for issuing a summary pardon to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, for any crimes he might have committed against the nation?

* President Carter, on whose watch the Iranian hostage rescue mission went so horribly wrong, causing the president and his national security team tremendous heartache?

* President Reagan, who misled the nation during the Iran-Contra crisis, which resulted in arms sales to the Contras in Central America while negotiations were underway with the rogue Iranian government that was holding seven American hostages?

* President George H.W. Bush, who promised never to raise taxes as long as he was president, and who then reneged on that solemn pledge?

* President George W. Bush, whose national security team — along with much of the rest of the world — sold Americans a bill of goods that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had a huge cache of chemical weapons? Turns out, after we invaded Iraq in March 2003, there were no such weapons — anywhere.

The answer to all of those, of course, is “no.”

You’ll notice, naturally, that I didn’t include President Clinton in that roster of past leaders. The House did impeach Clinton … for having an affair with a White House intern and then lying to a federal grand jury about it. In my view, the GOP set a pretty low standard for impeachment then as well. The Senate then tried Clinton, but acquitted him.

Are we heading back down that path now, with Republicans simply drooling over the possibility of impeaching a president?

They’re going to have to come up with a whole lot more than they’ve presented to date as reasons to do such a thing. And to date, they’ve produced nothing.

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Clinton vs. Christie in 2016

I know it’s early. I shouldn’t even be thinking like this. But I’m starting to lick my chops at the prospect of a 2016 presidential campaign between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chris Christie.

Neither of them has declared their intention to run, although both are beginning to act ever so slightly as though they’re interested in seeking their party’s nomination. Clinton already has run once for the Democratic nomination. Christie has been the Republican governor of New Jersey for three years.

Both are dynamic presences within their own key constituencies. They’re fierce defenders of their records. They’re politically savvy.

Why Clinton?

She might have the most comprehensive resume for the job since, perhaps, George H.W. Bush. Former first lady, former U.S. senator from New York, former secretary of state. Prior to all of that, she was Arkansas’s first lady and at one time was an accomplished lawyer. She’s been close to the center of power, given her marriage to one Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States.

Some pundits have compared her White House inevitability with that of General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower, who was deemed unbeatable during the 1952 presidential campaign. Turns out they were right about Ike.

Why Christie?

He is a no-nonsense guy. Christie is unafraid of the ideologues within his own party. He rolls up his sleeves and works for New Jersey. My favorite moment of the 2012 political season occurred when a Fox News Channel talking head, Steve Doocy, asked Christie if GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney would visit the Jersey Shore, which had been battered by Hurricane Sandy … on the heels of President Obama’s tour of the destruction. Christie’s response, in effect, was: I don’t give a damn whether he comes here or stays away; I’ve got a job to do. He added that he wasn’t the least bit interested in how it might affect the presidential campaign.

I ought not to engage in this kind of speculation. I’m doing it anyway with the hope that it comes to pass.

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Newt hates being negative?

Now I’ve heard just about everything there is to hear in contemporary American politics.

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the one-time bomb-thrower in chief of the Republican, the one-man wrecking crew against all things Democratic, now says his party has gone too “negative” in its effort to roll back the Affordable Care Act.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/14/20026954-gingrich-hope-key-to-progress-for-gop?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=4

I need to have my hearing checked?

Gingrich is now trying to be the paragon of positive thinking in his party. Imagine that.

My favorite Gingrich tactic came to light in the early 1990s when, while building what would become the House Republican majority, once counseled his congressional colleagues to adopt a glossary of terms to demonize his Democratic opponents. Among them was this notion that Republicans had to label Democrats, get ready for this one, as the “enemy of normal Americans.”

Remember how he tore after then-House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas for his ethical lapses? Turned out that Wright was dirty and he resigned from the House, but he did so after being bloodied badly by Gingrich’s relentless attack.

Gingrich’s scorched-Earth strategy succeeded in 1994, as the GOP captured both houses of Congress in one of the party’s more stunning mid-term successes. He then sought to give first-term President Clinton the dickens masterminding the infamous government shutdown. That didn’t work out too well for Gingrich, as his party got clobbered in the 1996 and 1998 elections. He eventually quit the House a broken political leader.

Gingrich has become the poster boy for those who know to acquire the power to govern, but who don’t know how to actually govern.

So here he is today, giving advice to his Republican progeny on how to woo disaffected voters.

Good luck with that, Mr. Speaker.