Down memory lane with Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton displayed his rage against Fox News anchor Chris Wallace in an interview scheduled for broadcast on Sunday morning.

Wallace asked the former president if he had failed to anticipate the danger posed by Osama bin Laden.

Clinton's answer, that he tried and failed to capture the al-Qaeda leader, was delivered in a volcanic eruption along with furious accusations against "right-wingers" and attacks on the record of the current administration, all accompanied by that famous jabbing finger and a sneering, snarling face that would do Snidely Whiplash proud.

You can see the clip here on YouTube.com.

It sure brings back memories, doesn't it?

Everyone will remember the finger-wagging "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" performance.

But you have to be a real connoisseur of the genre to remember the March 15, 1992, Democratic debate. If you bump into Jerry Brown on the campaign trail (he's running for California Attorney General), make his day and ask him about it.

The former California governor was one of the first people on the national scene to be on the receiving end of the finger-pointing, red-faced, crackling, theatrical outrage of Bill Clinton in full denial mode.

Jerry Brown had just raised the question of the Clinton family's conflicts of interest. "He is funneling money to his wife's law firm as state business, that's number one," Brown said, "Number two, his wife's law firm is representing clients before state of Arkansas agencies, his appointees."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, picking on mah wahf," the Arkansas governor seethed, jabbing his finger in Brown's direction.

Governor Clinton's rage got equal billing with the ethics charge on page one of the next day's papers. "Angry Clash Between Clinton and Brown; Dispute over Ethics at end of Democratic Debate," said the San Francisco Chronicle. The Los Angeles Times headline read, "Brown and Clinton in Bitter Clash; Californian accuses opponent and wife of conflicts of interest. Angry Clinton calls him an unprincipled politician."

It was a pretty effective technique. Years later, Jerry Brown told Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball that Bill Clinton's enraged reaction caught him by surprise. As Brown described it, when a man jabs his finger and turns red with anger, it makes you pull back and think, wait a minute, maybe I'm wrong.

But Jerry Brown wasn't wrong. Reporters from the Washington Post and the New York Times were digging deep and filing stories that sent the Clinton team into a frenzy of spin and cover-up. For a detailed look at the beehive of activity stirred up by news reports of Mrs. Clinton's legal work, click here. Talk about a trip down memory lane! Don't miss the part about Webb Hubbell and Vince Foster dividing up Mrs. Clinton's Rose law firm billing records and storing them in three different places, including Foster's attic (p. 164 of the pdf file, p. 409 of the report).

We saw the finger-jab act again when President Clinton denied having sex with Monica Lewinsky, and knowing how that turned out, it's tempting to say that the angrier he gets, the more likely it is that he's lying.

Not just lying, but trying to scare everyone off the trail.

Not just scare them off the trail, but shame them off the trail.

This requires some effort, and quite a large staff. It's a big job to demonize and discredit everyone who has the temerity to suggest that either or both of the Clintons are being less than completely truthful.

This might explain why Bill Clinton contacted liberal bloggers in the weeks before the ABC mini-series "The Path to 9/11" aired. At the time, he was trying to scare or shame the network into pulling the program from the schedule, and perhaps he thought the liberal bloggers could do to the mini-series what the conservative bloggers did to Dan Rather.

Alas, the mini-series was broadcast as scheduled, making its now highly-publicized point that the Clinton administration didn't do enough to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.

And this week, when Chris Wallace asked Bill Clinton about that specific charge, the country was treated to another splendid performance of finger-jabbing.

When vaudeville died, there were only a few comedians who successfully made the transition to radio and television. One reason was that broadcasting devoured in thirty minutes the comedy material that had taken years to compile. A comedian could do the same act forever as long as he did it for a different audience every night. But the act could only be performed on radio or television once.

For Bill Clinton, the time to retire the seltzer bottle has arrived.

Copyright 2006

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