Joe Conason writes a wonderful little gem in his diary about how Clinton was perceived before he locked the nomination. And we all know what happened then. This piece should serve to cool some of our embers of doubt. I, for one, take some heart in it. With all of the chatter going on right now about how unelectable Dean is (and I'm not saying that he WILL win, but that it's pretty durn likely), I was beginning to be somewhat disheartened. After all, Dean is the first politician to really get me going. He's the first one I've ever donated to (and have done so several times now). So, add this to all of the good news of late (the TIME/CNN poll, for instance), and I've got hope for the New Year! Woohoo!
Oh, and don't forget to click on the historical piece about Clinton that Conason provides. It's a wonderful perspective. Sorta reads like all of the chatter that's happening right now.
Here's a little snippet of what was being said back in '92:
"There's a perception building about Bill Clinton and that's the load he'll take into the general election," Cunningham continued. "A lot of people are dreading the general election right now."
Democratic media adviser David Garth similarly worries that "every time I think he's had his last wound he starts to bleed again and something else gets discovered.
"He hasn't done anything so terrible. It's just the way he plays it when confronted by charges or allegations," Garth told me. "If he would just stop trying to finesse the situation. It's not so much the thing he did that was so bad but how he handles it and people remember how he handles it.
"He's too cute by far. He talks like a lawyer when he says he didn't inhale [when he tried marijuana at Oxford]. I find it hard to believe. He should have just said it was a mistake. No one is going to hold one of those thing against him. But one thing they will hold against him is playing it a little too cute."
"Both of these candidates are so flawed that there is no possibility of their defeating President Bush," former New York Mayor Ed Koch said of both Clinton and former California Gov. Jerry Brown. "Bill Clinton has no credibility."