Bill and Donald: with friends like these…
For years, the Clintons and Trump used to be friends—or what passes for friends these days among the rich, famous, narcissistic, and hypocritical.
That’s one of the reasons why, early this primary season, a lot of people thought Trump was just a stalking horse for Hillary. I didn’t ascribe to that theory, and it seems even less likely to be true now that Trump has been reviving and re-airing some of the most sordid Bill Clinton allegations from the past.
In the 90s, Trump was a big defender of Bill:
“He defended Bill Clinton for years. He said the same allegations that [he is] talking about now were a waste of time, were wrong, were hollow, that Bill Clinton was a terrific guy. That he was a great president, that the impeachment was wrong, that it was a waste of time”¦” the host of CNN’s New Day Chris Cuomo rattled off.
But as Trump supporter and attorney Michael Cohen has explained:
[In the 90s Trump] was a private citizen who was friendly with the Clintons and he was trying to protect a friend. Now, it’s a different game. It’s 2016, he is the Republican presidential nominee.
Yes, it’s a different game. One of Trump’s most salient characteristics is that he is willing and able to turn on a dime without an ounce of shame—friend one minute, enemy the next, depending on whether you are in his way or not. We saw that phenomenon demonstrated during the Republican primaries.
Now, Hillary Clinton is an interesting—even unique—candidate in many ways. Not only is she (like Trump) unpopular to an unprecedented degree for a party’s almost-certain nominee, but she first entered the national consciousness as First-Lady-to-be and later drew attention as First Lady saddled with a philandering husband. When Bill was first running for president, Hillary said she wasn’t just some little woman standing by her man:
And yet the public had the experience just a few years later of watching her turn into exactly and precisely that, in the most humiliating way possible.
Many of us remember. But enough years have passed that younger voters probably don’t know much about it at all, and so Trump is kindly reminding them (and us) of the history. He’s also serving notice that those who would criticize him for his affairs should take a good look at the sins of the opposition, and that there’s a price to pay for taking up that line of attack against him.
Traditionally, candidates’ spouses have been considered off-limits from attacks by other candidates during campaigns (although we’ve had the Melania/Heidi wars this time). But Bill Clinton is as special a spouse as Hillary is a candidate. Maybe even more so. After all, he was the president, and a very popular 2-term one at that. He also was proven to have boldly lied to the American people back in the days when lying actually would have been thought to have meant something, and yet he remained very popular.
In a recent thread, commenter “Mrs Whatsit” wrote this:
…it seems to me that after the past eight years and what’s clearly coming next ”“ the election, either way, of an impossible disaster to the presidency and then the necessary consequences, whatever they may be ”“ some central assumption or understanding is already irretrievably gone, some shared idea that was once organically part of who we are but, once lost, can never be artificially recreated.
I agree. I’ve been searching for what it might be, and I’ve decided it’s not one thing but many. However, one very important shared idea that we’ve lost is the notion that presidents should be people of integrity. And if we discover they’re not, more of us used to be shocked and disappointed and disapproving. I think very few on right or left care about that sort of thing any more, and Bill Clinton was just one step along the way. I sometimes think that “integrity” (like “honor”) has become an obsolete word.
This caught my attention:
“If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.
Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favor, and answerable only to his august Boss.”
https://mises.org/library/isaiahs-job
vanderleun:
Yes, Trump has perfected the art of appealing to the worst in people. Your point?
No one ever said he’s not Machiavellian.
‘However, one very important shared idea that we’ve lost is the notion that presidents should be people of integrity.’
That’s because we’ve lost the notion the we (the voters) should people of integrity.
Or to put it another way, it takes one to vote for one.
Count me among the few who care. I can understand real estate developer djt getting cosy with the Clintons, and he is now free to blast their sordid past.
“One of Trump’s most salient characteristics is that he is willing and able to turn on a dime without an ounce of shame–friend one minute, enemy the next, depending on whether you are in his way or not.”
It is also a most contemptible and alarming characteristic. I would resist engagement, as a colleague, neighbor, friend, in-law, etc. someone like him. Also, as a Rubio supporter, later Cruz supporter, and even a non supporting Jeb Bush sympathizer, I cannot warm up to the now nominee. I won’t be voting for someone I found so contemptible for many months.
“Yes, Trump has perfected the art of appealing to the worst in people. Your point?”
Actually, I meant to point to those who, not needing the approval of the masses, speak their truth to a smaller group, but a group more important than it knows.
A prophet and a group that might, for instance, be located at a site like this.
OT follows:
I found this article by Walter Mead – The Meaning of Mr. Trump mirrored [some of] my reasons for never having been overly alarmed about the Rise of Trump.
I posted because I’d like to hear your analysis, neo.
I’ve pulled some pertinent quotes from the article:
(Formatting emendations are my own, naturally.)
I remain an unrepentant – albeit principled – proponent of the let-it-burn political crowd (I preferred Cruz as leading candidate of that branch of conservatives btw …but I do recognize that going forth into the chaotic unknown as alternative to the current system can be frightening anathema to the you-need-a-plan crowd …and am mildly sympathetic in a ruthless way to the hit on their sensibilities), but there’s a certain panache to CTRL-ALT-DEL that appeals to the techie in me (and the CAD acronym appeals greatly to my pun-ful side).
I suspect I’ll settle on “ctrl-alt-del” rather than “let-it-burn” going forward. (So “Thank you Dr. Mead” lol.)
PS – The article is behind a paid firewall, but The American Interest website does allow for one free article per month.
I forgot about Trump’s insult of Carly’s face. I doubt that many of her enthusiastic supporters are jumping onto the Trump bandwagon. I admire Glen Beck for keeping his distance from Trump. Trump is so unpredictable that I have no reason for confidence that he wouldn’t be worse than the devil we know.
Oh my. Double …triple? …header.
(Still mildly OT tho’. Sorry.)
It must be something in the air today. First Professor Mead, and now Consul Hindracker …er, rather Hindy is quoting Prof. Reynolds.
Powerline: “…rotting from the head”
USA Today: “When leaders cheat …”
The money quote …
Ctrl-alt-del indeed, dearies.
…hmm …the inclement local weather may be breaking: perhaps gardening would better occupy my time this afternoon, woot.
I’m with Steve D. The majority of Americans have lost all sense of a morality that celebrates anything beyond self-interest.
Think about it, they are willing to sacrifice children upon the altar of political correctness, i.e. transgendered bathrooms. Purposely ignoring the implicit invitation to rapists and pedophiles.
Somethings are so beyond the pale that no amount of rationalization can excuse them. America has crossed its societal ‘Rubicon’.
Any society, the majority of which have demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice its children has no future and deserves none, for they have embraced ‘the banality of evil’.
vanderleun:
Oops!
brdavis9:
So interesting that Walter Russell Mead is writing that article. Mead was a fool about Obama, and persisted in his foolishness for many years, although by 2012 he had caught on. I wrote about it here.
Mead has done some good work on the “Jacksonian” thing, but I have to say that I don’t think very highly of him any more after the Obama fiasco. So when Mead (a Boomer himself) writes that Trump’s election “would sweep away the smug generational certainties that Clinton embodies, the Boomer Progressive Synthesis that hasn’t solved the problems of the world or of the United States, but which nevertheless persists in regarding itself as the highest and only form of truth” I almost have to laugh. How on earth did the Boomer who wrote those words support Obama? Does he not feel the need to indict himself, ex post facto?
Mead renames the “Burn it down” crowd the “CTRL-ALT-DEL” crowd. I fail to see any difference. The mood is destructive rather than constructive, and they are choosing a person who is a reprehensible character when others (for example, Cruz) were readily available. Rage and destructiveness do not usually make for good governance, as history has told us. If Trump is elected and he is better than I expect, fine, well and good. But there is no indication he will be, and his supporters have chosen an amazingly high-risk and essentially juvenile form of revenge for a world that hasn’t given them what they think they need.
Mead’s description of Trump is stating the obvious, it seems to me.
Note also that, embedded in Mead’s piece, is a thought for which I criticized him in my previous post about him: he still seems to think Obama is a fool rather than a knave (see this). In the piece about Trump he writes “it’s not hard to conclude that neither the neoconservatives nor the Obama-ites really know what they are doing.” On the contrary, Obama and his confederates know exactly what they’re doing, and they are quite successful at doing it.
Then we have things like this from Mead:
Clear since 2008? I think it was clear long before that—economists have long been divided and quarreling, they never were “sure” how the system worked (and not just “anymore”), and Mead’s notion that economists could “make the world system work to the benefit of ordinary voters in the United States” is also puzzling. Does he believe that economists should be able to figure out how to control the economy that way? Has he studied the history of the Great Depression? Perhaps he might have learned that this is asking way too much of economists, and that it’s a liberal dream that we could ever do that.
What on earth does he mean by this: “Even the neoconservatives are enlisting in her [Hillary Clinton’s] campaign.” Who? What? Maybe a few are NeverTrumpers, but they hate Hillary and if any do support her (I still don’t know who they would be) it would only be because they might consider her the lesser of two very bad evils.
By the way, his “Boomer Consensus” thing is crap, IMHO. First of all, Trump’s support among Boomers is one of the highest of any other age group. Secondly, Boomers voted for Romney in 2012, not for Obama, and since Mead defines the “Boomer Consensus” as the progressive agenda, I don’t see any consensus for it among Boomers.
I could go on, but I’ll stop there.
brdavis9:
I guarantee that what would arise from the ashes is nothing that you or the others in the “burn it down” crowd would expect or approve of.
As always with Trump, it is better to look ar what he has done, and pay no attention to what he says — which changes from day to day, and even minute to minute.
And if you do that, you can not find a single instance in which he has blown anything up (other than four bankrupt companies, and those weren’t intentional).
Instead, he has been a classic corrupt, crony businessman, perfectly happy to work with the Mafia, or any corrupt politician who he can bribe. And perfectly happy to cheat his customers, and workers.
Bravo! Nice, pithy analysis of Mead’s article, neo.
Jim Miller:
I am truly puzzled when people compare the damage Trump has done as a businessman with the damage he could do as president. The venue, the issue, and in particular the amount of power (and potentially destructive power) he had as the former vs. what he would have as the latter are all night and day. I just don’t see any way to compare them.
neo…
Mead is WAY off on the generation that came up with today’s Progressivism.
ALL of the key players belonged to the Silent Generation (ED Kennedy, Foley, Pelosi, Reid, , — if not the GI Generation. (LBJ, RMN, GRF, RWR Speakers Wright, O’Neill, … )
The first Boomer to sit in the Big Chair: Bill Clinton. His most notable achievement in Welfare was its restriction.
I see Mead’s grandiose assumption — EVERYWHERE.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
We are still on emotional-political auto-pilot — with Ed Kennedy at the controls.
( No Child Left Behind — wide open boarders — the un-Europeanization of America…
[ Hector and lecture from the Senate…
[ Every Senator a bishop of largesse…
[ Governance as a vanity project…
EVERYTHING we now see is but a reflex action to the traumas experienced by the Silent Generation during their youth: the Great Depression.
And they’ve done a bang up job, too.
They ought to be re-titled: the Squandering Generation.
Silent they have not been.
neo – Agreed.
I was using blow up as Yrump supporters sometimes do, to describe the destruction of a corrupt system. (As they see it.) They are wrong to hope for that, judging by his record.
My own view of what we should worry about is somewhat darker, having read Herman Kahn’s little book some years ago.
I believe the chance of a nuclear war has increased since Obama was elected president, partly because of his policies.
I think Trump would be even worse, combining, as he does, arrogance and ignorance.
We are paying less attention to the need for a prudent president fin a nuclear age — and that’s a serious mistake.
“presidents should be people of integrity”. That went out the window with LBJ.
I came to the conclusion that Mead is a fool long ago. He constantly goes on about the Blue Model and its problems, but then turns around and suggests yet more government programs as a fix.
I’ve thought since it happened that the Democrats’ circling the wagons around Bill Clinton after it was clear that he had lied under oath represented a turning point, one of those events like the storming of the Bastille that serves as a convenient historical marker for the end of one era and the beginning of another. They were put to the test, the same sort of test the Republicans were put to with Watergate, and they failed. They had to choose between integrity and power, and they chose power.
They demonstrated to the rest of us that they no longer believed in a government of laws, not men. That noble idea was just another bromide to be trotted out when the law was against your enemy, and ignored when it was against you.
A 3rd party run can work.
blert: “EVERYTHING we now see is but a reflex action to the traumas experienced by the Silent Generation during their youth: the Great Depression.”
I’m of the Silent Generation. The traumas I experienced did not make me a believer in big government. It made me a believer in hard work and thrift. But maybe that’s because that is what I was taught by my family. We always had roof of sorts over our heads and enough to eat, but nothing came easy. We knew we had to work. I was selling newspapers on a street corner, carrying cases of milk into hotels, doing pick up labor before I was 14 years old. Those who were further up on the ladder of wealth may have been traumatized by what they saw. I didn’t have time to be traumatized, I was too busy trying to earn some money. Have been a small government, free enterprise believer my entire life.
I disown the lefty members of my generation. And those of the Greatest Generation, like LBJ, etc.
Paul in Boston:
No, it wasn’t LBJ. I’ll tell you why.
LBJ didn’t behave the same way in public as he did in private. He had enough respect for the American people that he thought he had to cover up his shenanigans.
I wrote:
Most people would have been shocked and disapproving had they known more about Johnson’s private behavior, but they did not. Most people who didn’t like LBJ were mad at him for the Vietnam War, and also because he wasn’t the suave and charming JFK. Leftists were also mad at him for supposedly lying about the Gulf of Tonkin, which actually was not the case. But most people were unaware of his philandering, his coarseness, and even how he had cheated in some of his early elections in Texas. I’m sure people in Texas knew about it, but it was not common knowledge elsewhere except among the cognoscenti. I never heard any of that “landslide Lyndon” stuff until much much later. During his 1964 campaign against Johnson, Goldwater very much stuck to the issues rather than talking about things like that.
[Democrats] “had to choose between integrity and power, and they choose power” Mac
Yes, though by then the left had fully wrested power from liberal democrats like Moynihan. And arguably, from its very founding under Andrew Jackson, the democrat party’s ‘allegiance’ to the rule of law has been strictly one of convenience.
Things had changed a great deal even before Clinton’s impeachment. Just four years before he was elected in 1992, Gary Hart had to drop out of his run for the presidential nomination because of his affair with Donna Rice. I just watched the 60 Minutes interview the Clintons did when his affair with Gennifer Flowers came to light in the 1992 campaign. It’s a remarkable performance, in which Clinton refuses to either deny or confirm the affair. I’d forgotten what a slippery weasel of a man he was even then, and I don’t understand how he was able to get by with it. And Hillary’s performance…well don’t get me started! Here’s the link to the video. Wouldn’t recommend it, though, for anyone with high blood pressure.
President Bush had integrity.
Comes to my mind, as I read all of these comments:
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Let’s all please remember that voters who vote Rep in November are less, or far less, Conservative, than voters in the primary.
At least, thru recent history.
Conservatives have, temporarily, lost the culture war battles, including public morality and the unacceptability of private immorality among politicians.
Both Carter and Reagan were pretty full of integrity. What about Bush 41?
“Read my lips, no new taxes” — and then he proposed higher taxes.
So ’92 had a lying Rep (Rino?) vs a young, articulate, lying Dem.
Recall why GHW Bush was VP — because he was the “good gov’t” faction (moderate?) of the Reps, when the Reagan “small gov’t” faction won the nominee, and candidate Reagan wanted to unite the Party. GHWB was not very conservative.
And the media demonized him, as they have demonized every Rep since … Nixon? Goldwater? Nixon in ’60?
Reps got rid of Tricky Dick — but the anti-War ’60s boomers then Lost the Peace in Vietnam, and allowed the Killing Fields.
The media demonization has put a Rep premium on insulation against demonizing press, and Trump does seem to have that, far more somehow than the much cleaner Cruz.
(I thought Vanderluen’s note was about Cruz supporters. 😉 )
I suggest you read Miles Kimball: Supply Side Liberal for often reasonable analysis, tho mostly economics oriented. I think he’s a liberal trying to be honest, mostly, and I don’t find many like that.
http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/
(Ex-Mormon Econ prof, cousin to Mitt)
Neo, you and I seem to have different memories of the 1960s. Remember the 1964 campaign promise, “I am not sending American boys 10,000 miles to do what Asian boys should be doing”. Yes, not much was known about his personal life publically, but he was considered a lying SOB by the end of his time in office. No one, absolutely no one, trusted a single word that came out of his mouth.
We boomers have no one to blame but ourselves. When we were in college, my (future) wife was in a sorority. Most of her friends were Education majors. I said at the time, “God help us when these people get to be in charge of the schools.” I thought I was joking.
Paul in Boston:
The key phrase in your comment is “by the END of his time in office.” He was not being elected by the end of his time in office. In fact, he quit, in part because he knew he probably would not be re-elected.
My point is that none of this was widely known when the American people voted for him. Nor were his personal quirks.
Tom G:
Once again, let me point out that my point is not that politicians of the past didn’t lie or betray promises, it’s that they didn’t do it blatantly and they didn’t do it before elections, because they thought they’d pay the price in the election. And in fact, the American people rejected Bush for re-election, and one of the main reasons was the “no new taxes” broken pledge.
Nor, by the way, is there evidence that his pledge was given cynically, with the intention of breaking it. See this for the history of how and why it happened, and you might end up agreeing with me that Bush was actually a man of integrity and that he had no intent to lie to the American people.
the Clintons and Trump used to be friends–or what passes for friends these days among the rich, famous, narcissistic, and hypocritical.
they were never friends…
sorry
i attend those events and its about image not about truth
they are NOT friends
Trump is dirt, he is real estate..
they are politics and banking, the two rarely mix
they dont even marry each other!!!!
i would take pics of people and they would act like lost buddies and friends and then when it was over, walk away from each other and complain how they have to do this crap for the publicity and the people!!!!!!!!!
even worse, trump is outer borough.
he is low brow to them… new riche..
to the people who look up, all money appears the same
to the people with money, it certainly isnt
bankers and politicians are old money
real estate and that is new money
Nouveau Riche
and
Old Money
they associate cause they HAVE to..
but they HATE those who are not old money and they barely tolerate them off camera, they dont work with them, they would rather not invite them, and more
The left has spent the past twenty years systematically destroying all our social trust . . . so now they’re upset because you can’t trust anyone?
TOO FUCKING BAD. Where was all this hand-wringing when Bill Clinton was lying on a daily basis? Where was all this outrage when Obama got elected on a platform of lies?
The Left has created a new environment in American politics. We’ve watched dozens of decent, honorable Republicans go down to defeat at the hands of lying, corrupt Democrats.
Fine. Time to take the gloves off. Time to run our own liars. Maybe we can pick better liars than the Democrats. Because it turns out losing with integrity is still losing.
The alternative is violence.
i told you i dated a social register deb and i learned a lot from that
While trump flaunts to show he has what they have
They dont flaunt it at all, they flaunt their associations and keep their wealth hidden and away from public scrutiny…
the Clintons made 21 million in two years..
where is the Clinton mansions? the cars? the other stuff?
of course the unwashed masses of poorer people have no idea of the games and bs of this area, because they dont want to!!!!!!! to them its all the same, when its not to those in the game!
Trumps pedigree goes back to a poor immigrant barber late last century
The Rodhams and the Clintons go back way farther than that!!!
you can tell because you can trace her lineage back more than 8 generations to Navarre family of Detroit Michigan
Robert Navarre was born in Detroit in 1739. His father, Robert Navarre, was originally from Villeroy, France, but came to Fort Ponchartrain du Detroit in 1730 (1739?) from Nova Scotia. His mother was Mary Lootman (Barios?). In Detroit, Navarre married Louise de Marsac, granddaughter of Cadillac’s sergeant, Jacob de Marsac.
The Navarre’s, are descedents of Antoine Navarre, Duke de Vendome who was a half-brother of Henry IV, King of France and Navarre.
got it? old money…
want to laugh? another ancestor is Catherine Bourdeau..
go back up the tree on another line and you get to catherine boudreau
catherine boudreau was part of the weather underground with ayers
how about her husband? chelsea clinton is listed as the daugher of hillary rodham, and William Jefferson Blythe III.. (not Clinton)
William Jefferson Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III, August 19, 1946) is an American politician who was 42nd President of the United States
go back to the first Blyth… and who did he marry? Lou Birchie Ayers
Lou Birchie (Ayers) Blythe was the grandmother of President Bill Clinton. She was the daughter of Simpson Green Ayers and Hattie (Hayes) Ayers, the wife of William Jefferson Blythe II, and the mother of William Jefferson Blythe III.
so if you want to know the game of communism and all that, its just old time royalty taking back the world that the colonialists and such took from them!!!
a long time ago, i said look to the lineages to understand why they want to destroy family, why despite being feminsts they have so many, and who their family members are and what names cahnged
you will find that this group goes back to at least the 1600s…
mostly related..
heck, you realize the linage of Valerie Jarret is ALSO connected to the Ayers line?
Valerie Jarrett’s father was James Bowman the communist…
[edited for length by n-n]
ok, one more fun one
Alfred Stern was a communist…
well, how about this?
Martha Dodd (dont know if she is related to Bella Dodd, who was head of the communist party and the teachers union).
an American journalist and novelist. The daughter of William Edward Dodd, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first Ambassador to Germany, Dodd lived in Berlin from 1933—37 and was a witness to the rise of the Third Reich. She became involved in left-wing politics after she purportedly witnessed first-hand the violence of the Nazi state. With her second husband Alfred Stern Jr. she engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union from before World War II until the height of the Cold War.
tons more at wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Dodd
Artfldgr:
By the way, that’s what “or what passes for friends” refers to. It doesn’t mean bona fide friends.
When I started calling Trumpkins “cynical burnouts” months ago, this is what I meant. They have lost faith in most ideals or principles, and when that happens wholesale you get nihilism.