Paul Begala, who helped get Clinton into the White House, and was there when the Clinton White House was going though the stress of its Grand Jury,
gives some perspective at the
Talking Point Memo Cafe on what the current White House is going through, referring to it as "an exquisite form of torture" and why it is probably significantly worse than what Clinton and his staff went through.
More after the fold ...
In particular, he points out that the current White House is facing a similar crisis that Clinton faced:
The pressure of a federal criminal investigation - especially one in the media spotlight - is bone-crushing. My guess is that the strain is taking a gruesome toll.
In particular he notes that some of the strain is starting to show, and it will only get worse:
Already we hear rumors of President Bush exploding at his aides, at the President blaming Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, and anyone else in sight for his woes.
At times like these, it is the character that counts:
when The Boss explodes like that, there are two kinds of aides -- those who fight and those who flee.
The key difference between the Clinton White House and the Bush White House is one of character - according to Begala, although the Bush White House used to have a staff with character, it has disappeard:
When he came to Washington, Mr. Bush surrounded himself with tough-minded people who seemed not to be afraid to stand up to him. But now his team is loaded with weak-kneed toadies, and Mr. Bush is home alone.
Begala makes the key point that the character of the people that got him elected to office has gradually been diluted as people moved into other positions, to be replaced by sycophants and ass-kissers (probably my favorite paragraph):
Mr. Bush would do well to augment his current staff, a C-Team if ever there was one, with some stronger characters. But to read the Bush-Miers correspondence is to gain a disturbing insight into Mr. Bush's personality: he likes having his ass kissed. Ms. Miers' cards and letters to the then-Governor of Texas belong in the Brown-Nosers Hall of Fame. You can be sure the younger and less experienced Bush White House aides are even more obsequious. The last thing this President wants is the first thing he needs: someone to slap his spoiled, pampered, trust-funded, plutocratic, never-worked-a-day-in-his-life cheek and make him face the reality of his foul-ups.
In comparison, as times got hard, Clinton called in some hard-nosed confidants who would call him on his shit. Making it even worse for bush and his staff is that for Clinton's staff, the majority had nothing to worry about, as the scandal was between Clinton, Monica, and a dress. For Bush's staff, there is much more to worry about, as they are the scandal:
Compared to these folks, I had it easy. I'd never met Monica Lewinsky, had no knowledge of the affair, which took place when I was living in Austin, and I knew that neither I nor any of my colleagues were in Ken Starr's perverse crosshairs. The Fitzgerald investigation is very different. It's not about the President's extracurricular activities. It's about the essence of how the White House works - and the suggestion that this White House has become deeply corrupt.