Lbobs Officail Bill Clinton Thread

It was a very good interview. Letterman did not serve up softballs, but Clinton was usually up to it.

 

genious . . . in comparison

I saw a lot of the interview as well.

Clinton is not a genious - but he is really really bright and can communicate complex ideas really well.

The sort of thing you'd expect in the leader of the free world.

Seeing him hold forth on a bunch of complicated issues last night just made me more depressed that we are now stuck with W.

The really tragic thing is that such a talented and smart guy like Clinton didn't achieve half of what he might have as President because of his personal failings and his lack of political courage. (Triangulating the electorate with help from Dick Morris on almost every major issue).

 

Clinton is a brilliant orator and communicator. Thats where my admiration of him ends. The lasting image a lot of people will have of Clinton is of him wagging his finger to the American people and lying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..."

 

Kind of like Nixon saying "I am not a crook"

Clinton is not merely a great communicator (the limit of my admiration for Ronald Reagan), but also a very intelligent man - but with huge personal moral failings.

 

I also saw the first black president on Letterman last night and thought his analysis was very astute, particularly his points about why he supported inspections resuming in Iraq.
As for his presidency, if we weren't a nation of such moral hypocrisy, we would've focused less on the penis affair and allowed him more time to focus on issues which should've garnered all his focus, like snatching/offing Bin Laden before he could orchestrate something like 9/11.

 

Federal Aviation Agency
800 Independence Avenue S.W.
Washington D.C. 20591

Dear Sirs:

I have the solution for the prevention of hijackings and at the same time getting our airline industry back on its feet.

Since men of the Muslim religion are not allowed to look at naked women we should replace all of our female flight attendants with strippers.

Muslims would be afraid to get on the planes for fear of seeing a naked woman, and of course, every businessman in this country would start flying again in hopes of seeing a naked woman.

We would have no more hijackings, and the airline industry would have record sales.

Now why didn't Bush think of this? Why do I still have to do everything myself?

Sincerely,

Bill Clinton

 

Genius.

 

...also rhymes with his favorite body part

 

You prove the point well -- here we are 30 years later and people still remember Nixon for that.

 

Breastius?

 

As a member of the Aerospace industry, I say this will work. Let's do it, and it will create more jobs for everyone.This will solve all of our economic problems.

 

Clinton is an unusually intelligent man. He is a great communicator, but strangely never gave a particularly memorable speech (Wash Post columnist Mark Shields once asked what words they were planning to put on the walls of the Clinton Library). But intelligence in and of itself has never made a president. Of the generally conceded five best presidents -- Washington, FDR, Lincoln, TR, and .... Truman (at least on the last historians poll that I saw) -- only TR was a braniac (The inclusion of Jefferson could change that equation). Lincoln was very above average. The other three were intelligent but not overpowering intellects who possessed very astute political sensibilities and a firm sense of direction. Meanwhile, the bottom of the list would include the uber-intelligent Richard Nixon and a constitutional scholar in James Buchanan.

I think what Clinton lacked is what we saw on display today in Bush's speech to the U.N. Whether you agree or disagree with him, think he's smart or a moron, Bush has spine. He knows how to get things done. That's something that Clinton only managed to find from time to time. That was symptomatic of his lack of strong beliefs, beyond his own political survival.

 

It's easy to have spine when the conflict is clear and you are under attack. Before Sept. 11, Bush was no more spiney than Clinton. The strongest stance the White House ever took was in preventing the press from finding out Cheney's energy connections.

 

After the elections, Bush was supposed to concede his illiegitmacy and move to the center. Or so the conventional wisdom went. He was supposed to forget about his tax cut. But he fought for it and won. Again, we can debate the wisdom of the tax cut, but when he wants something done, it gets
done.

 

Like drilling in Alaska? Like the stimulus bill? Like regime change in Venezuela? Like keeping the budget down and not having a big defecit?

 

Genius? Are we talking about the same guy? I have to question the intelligence of many of you here if you think Bill Clinton is a genius. He is biggest moron we've had as President in recent history. If you consider talking out of both sides of your mouth and being all things to all people a positive thing then, yeah, he was a freaking genius. The guy is a lying, egomaniacal camera poon hound...and a rapist to boot. What kind of a braniac risks his historical legacy as President of the United States for a 30 second ************** by some fat skanky intern? Really, the guy has no redeeming qualities.

Oh, I'm sure he'd be fun to hang with on the golf course and go trolling for babes with afterward...but...President? Seriously, I could see this guy selling used cars to skanky white trash divorcees in suburban Chicago, and then taking them for a test drive and unzipping his fly while he asks them to park on the side of the road. So, really in that sense the guy overachieved for his intelligence, but largely because he had a pushy, over-ambitious beeotch for a wife.

 

Genius as in strippers on planes.

You still have a hard on for Bill and his wife. Get over it guy...

 

The rest of your rant proves the point that everyone else is objectively making here -- he's got major character flaws but that doesn't make him any less intelligent. Let's go through this argument:

"He is biggest moron we've had as President in recent history." - Initial salvo. The only way this is true IMO is if you count "recent history" as 1988-2000, and then it's a tossup between Bush Sr (great mind for foreign relations, but he was not interested enough in domestic issues for the public to know what he really knew) and Clinton. Ian's offered evidence for his claim?

"If you consider talking out of both sides of your mouth and being all things to all people a positive thing then, yeah, he was a freaking genius." -- Says a lot about his political style, but nothing about his intellect.

"The guy is a lying, egomaniacal camera poon hound...and a rapist to boot." -- Hmm, moral failings, and then an unsubstantiated personal attack. Nothing about smarts yet.

"What kind of a braniac risks his historical legacy as President of the United States for a 30 second ************** by some fat skanky intern?" -- one with some serious moral problems; not necessarily someone who's stupid. Lots of high-ranking political figures have had longer and more intimate affairs than Clinton, including the aforementioned Bush Sr. Does that make him a moron as well? By the way, nice objectification of women there with the "fat, skanky" remark, Romeo.

People who have worked with Clinton from both sides of the aisle say almost universally that the guy is really, really intelligent. If you could for once detatch your personal hatred for the man from a serious dissertation on his intellect, you might be able to admit that without putting your personal morals in jeopardy.

 

obie's offered evidence for this claim?

 

Of course it's hysterical that you would want "evidence" for an affair without substantiating a claim that Clinton was a rapist, but whatever.

Her name is Jennifer Fitzgerald. 20-year relationship. They had a chateau in Switzerland together. Newsweek reported it in 1991 or early '92, before the Presidential race really started to heat up. You can do your own Google search if you really need to know more. Other media outlets had a field day not exactly reporting it, but instead reporting on Newsweek's reporting of it. Bush never addressed it, and to my knowledge neither did Fitzgerald. So "proof" in the way that Ian would find irrefutable like a semen-stained dress? No. But common knowledge within DC.

Haven't you ever wondered why Bush Sr. didn't bring up Clinton's numerous proclivities when they faced each other in 1992?

 

Wanting proof about this kind of tawdriness says more about the voyeristic freaks who got off on this kind issue than it does about those who engage in such behavior.

 

Clinton was good and evil. Just like all American Presidents. All of them have lied when they shouldn't have, all of them have caused death and suffering (Sudan?). All of them have attempted to make America a better place (in thier minds anyway).


The right wingers on this website viciously attack Clinton and most of the time it's just cheap shots.

However, I'm equally as worried about people who put Clinton on the same pedastal as Ghandi or MLK. Make no mistake, Clinton was as corrupt as any President before him.