As a recc'd diary here notes, over at HuffPo, Peter Dreier takes a comprehensive look at the sad story of how Sidney Blumenthal is using the "vast right-wing conspiracy" to attack Barack Obama's character. Ironically, Blumenthal, who was a Clinton White House staffer and is now a pro-Clinton journalist, has documented how the very same right-wing network tried to destroy Bill Clinton during the 1990s on both paper and film.
Dreier's article offers a new look at what I think is a central truth of this election: the Clintons (and their political organization) learned all the wrong lessons from the 1990s. Instead of standing up to the American right, they now embrace it. It's desperate and its cynical. These are the people who helped lead the impeachment against Bill Clinton. And now the Clintons are not only forging a new alliance with them, they are throwing under the bus organizations like MoveOn.org which helped save Bill Clinton's presidency.
In the past few weeks, I've posted several videos on this theme, and I'll repost three of them here.
The first clip shows Blumenthal discussing The Arkansas Project, a key organization in the campaign to destroy Bill Clinton. The Arkansas Project was funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, a billionaire Pennsylvanian who made it his mission to bring down the Clinton presidency. (The clip is from the 2004 documentary The Hunting of the President.)
Scaife owns the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which he used to advance smears against the Clintons such as the completely false idea that Hillary was involved with Vince Foster's suicide. Despite Scaife's virulently anti-Clinton history, Hillary Clinton sought his endorsement in March. It would have been one thing if she went there and stood up to him, but instead, Clinton used the Scaife editorial board to attack Barack Obama over Jeremiah Wright. Scaife, of course, endorsed Clinton. Here's a clip of Clinton at and immediately after the editorial board:
The last video is for me the most poignant. It's from the The War Room, the 1992 documentary on Bill Clinton's first Presidential campaign. It is chilling to watch the similarities between the patriotism attacks leveled against Bill Clinton and the ones leveled today against Barack Obama.
In the 1990s, the Clintons were the target of vicious attack machine, and they survived with our help. $109 million and an unhealthy sense of entitlement later, they have now become embraced the very thing they were once against.
They truly have learned all the wrong lessons from the 1990s. Ironically, the are ignoring the most important lesson of all: during the 1990s, the vast right-wing conspiracy lost. So too will they in 2008.