YOU know, I really thought Bill Clinton was going to pull it off. Media dogs bite the prez who fed them
I really had begun to believe that he would squeak through his presidency with nothing more than a few unproven allegations staining his legacy like catsup glops on a sports jacket.
But he's dead meat. And he's dead meat because he underestimated the hypocrisy of the news media.
Back when Clinton was running for president, the media actually protected him from being politically pilloried over his affair with Gennifer Flowers. He would never have been president if "60 Minutes" had not allowed the Clintons to make like snuggle bunnies on the air. Hillary told the country she stood by her man. Clinton admitted he hadn't exactly been a monk but that those days were over and it was time to move on. "60 Minutes" producer Don Hewitt even took credit for pulling the Clinton candidacy out of the toilet.
The Washington, D.C., media made no secret over the years that Clinton was their guy. They poo-pooed every allegation that came out about Clinton from Whitewater to Travelgate to Paula Jones to missing files to influence peddling.
The press corps only grudgingly covered the Clinton controversies, usually after it had been embarrassed into doing so by irrefutable signs that something was wrong at Camelot Lite, like the suicide of Vince Foster and the guilty plea of Hillary's pal Web Hubbell, who Clinton had appointed to one of the highest law enforcement posts in the country.
EVEN congressional hearings on campaign fund-raising violations failed to grow legs and dance onto the front pages of the nation's papers. (The inept Republican interrogators proved they couldn't put legs on a Mr. Potato Head.)
And so, it looked like Bill was going to skate. He was going to make it. Sure, his enemies landed a few punches, but he was going to get through eight years as prez without even having to take a standing eight-count.
He forgot that the Washington press corps has all the qualities of a dog, except loyalty. (Maybe that's why he got a dog, after all.)
The media doesn't need Bill anymore. He's a lame duck. The protection racket is over. The hounds of media hell have been loosed on the White House lawn. Sam Donaldson has even returned to the Oval Office and is ready to clamp on to Clinton's butt like a Rottweiler with a protein deficiency.
It isn't going to be the mean, old inept Republicans who bring down Clinton. It's going to be the fickle Washington press, jumping happily onto the Paula Jones bandwagon and tearing into new allegations that Clinton played sucky face with a White House intern.
The press corps already is ripping apart Clinton's Al Gore-ish statement "there is no improper relationship" with the intern. Note he uses the present tense "is" to avoid answering the allegation and modifies the word "relationship" with the debatable term "improper." This is like Sen. Mark Hatfield saying he never "improperly" shoved his tongue down his female aides' throats. Next, Clinton will say it was not improper for him to boink his intern because there was no "controlling legal authority" against it.
More serious is the allegation that Clinton or his lackey Vernon Jordan told the intern to lie under oath about the dalliance. I doubt if the intern has the fortitude to fall on the sword like Hubbell instead of eventually spilling her guts.
Clinton is dead meat. The party's over. Elvis has left the building. And worse yet, Sam Donaldson is on the premises. He's knocking at the door. And he's hungry.