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Bekijk Volledige Versie : Verkiezingen witte huis 2004: De Bushies versus Clinton?



Donna
01-06-03, 13:19
BILL CLINTON: He's Gotta Be Loving This ... (And The Campaigns Managers Gotta Be...)

AP's Fournier reports, ex-Pres. Bill Clinton and his economic record are suddenly being embraced by the WH '04 candidates. And they are "just as quick to second-guess" VP Gore "for running from his sex scandal-plagued boss" in '00. Ex-VT Gov. Howard Dean (D), on Gore: "I don't know why he did that because I never ran away from Clinton. Despite Clinton's problems in the second term, he was the best strategist the White House has seen since Franklin Roosevelt."
The "once shunned" Clinton has "transformed himself into a youthful party elder: adviser, mediator and uber-strategist urging tough stands against the White House." He has become a "living example" of how to defeat a Bush with a weak economy.
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA): "I worked with the president to reduce the deficit ... and I respect the choices he made to help create 23 million jobs and low inflation and low unemployment. ... He's an asset to this party."
Dean, Kerry, Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO 03), Sens. John Edwards (D-NC), Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Bob Graham (D-FL) "talk about once a month" with Clinton.
So far Clinton has advised Edwards to spend "less time on TV" and study the issues more. He "complained to Edwards" about Bush's plans for "rebuilding Iraq, and suggested that Democrats press the issue." Edwards: "I totally agree. I'm already doing that."
Clinton "urged" Lieberman to be "tougher on Bush."
When Dean and Kerry "tangled during" a SC debate, Clinton "publicly urged" the Dems to stop bickering. At their next forum, the Dem field "laid off the infighting, and attacked Bush's's anti-terrorism policies."
One candidate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Clinton's "thinking is behind" the Dems Party's "fledgling effort to limit and coordinate debates being sought by dozens of constituency groups."
But the Clintons high profile -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) will release her memoirs next month and he may publish a book "shortly before the election" -- has GOPers welcoming "the distraction." Clinton also "raised eyebrows" 5/28 when he "called for a constitutional amendment allowing the next two-term president to reclaim his office."
Clinton associates say he has "no intention of taking sides in the primary" -- "at least until here is a presumptive nominee, when he might urge any die-hard rivals to quit the race and unite against Bush." At the same time, the candidates "pledge to embrace Clinton, even in the general election." Kerry: "I think somebody should have had (Clinton) speaking up in 2000" (Indianapolis Star, 5/30).

Het lijkt erop alsof Clinton wraak wil voor de verkiezingen van 2000, waarin Bush senior wraak nam voor de verkiezingen in 1992! :D

De Amerikaanse politiek begint steeds meer op 1 grote familievete te lijken.......

Maar hij doet het via de andere democratische kandidaten (of 1 kandidaat, ik gok op Kerry). Of niet.....?


Clinton As Model Democrat?
Boston Globe's Lehigh writes on Clinton's visit to the Kennedy Library 5/28 and wonders, "how could a man so smart, and possessed of so many talents have gambled his presidency by having an affair with a Gen X flibbertigibbet. And, second, when will the Democrats see his like again? That is, produce a candidate as adept at framing a message and arguing a point? (Certainly Clinton's cogent critique of George Bush's ill-considered tax policy is more persuasive than anything this columnist has yet heard from the candidates this time around.)"
Boston Herald's Cohen writes, "he's good, dammit, really good. Who else could make eye contact with several hundred people for a couple of hours during a speech and 'conversation'" at the JFK Library. Said "one young woman" afterwards: "It's amazing how he does that. I would swear he was looking right at me."
Clinton looked "lean" and he "was loose." Said Clinton: "I don't care, I'm not runnin'' for anything." He then "proceeded to crack wise and say of the 2000 election results": "At least it gave our Supreme Court a rare opportunity to stand up for minority rights." :hihi: Clinton, "charming and ruthless, flawed and beguiling," continues to "fascinate because he remains" a "bundle of contradictions. That and because he remains on the stage" (5/30).

Time To Bone Up On The 22nd Amendment
New York Times' Stout writes about Clinton's wish for a repeal of the 22nd Amendment, which limits the president to two terms, consecutive or otherwise. Univ. of New Orleans' Douglas Brinkley notes that the law, enacted after FDR became the only pres. elected to more than two terms, "has to drive someone like Bill Clinton crazy." Brinkley said Clinton "is not just a physically fit man of 56 who has been put out to pasture. He is in withdrawal from 'the ultimate power palace' of the White House who yearns to make up for his failures, and not just by party fund-raising or Jimmy Carter-style good deeds with hammer and saw."
But Brinkley noted that Clinton made "a reasonable argument." Said Clinton 4/28: "There may come a time when we have elected a president at age 45 or 50, and then 20 years later the country comes up with the same sort of problems the president faced before. And the people would like to bring that man or woman back." Clinton said he was "not proposing that a president be elected to three or more consecutive terms, but that he be able to get elected again after an interim."
Brinkley: "British prime ministers can come back. Why can't American presidents?"
But the 22nd Amendment, which took effect in '51, bars a person from being elected more than twice. Historians "sometimes invoke images of the frail, cloak-wrapped" FDR "shortly before his death in 1945 as an argument that a president should not serve more than two terms." But those behind the 22nd Amendment "had pure politics as well as history in mind." In '47, "with new majorities in both houses and smarting from their years out of power, Republicans pushed the amendment through Congress. The measure took four years to gather the necessary support among the states." And given the "bitter partisanship" today, most pol. observers don't see a repeal of the 22nd any time soon. Brinkley: "The only way you'll ever see Bill Clinton in the White House again is in the role of First Man."
On 5/28, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) was "so swept away" by Clinton's words that, "praising the White House years of the president who declared the era of big government over, the man who has long symbolized same found tears trickling down his face." Kennedy: "You'd still be there today, Mr. President, if our Republican friends in Congress hadn't been so mad at Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940s that they amended the COnstitution to limit presidents to two terms" (Lehigh, Boston Globe, 5/30).

Take A Guess What Was Topic #1 On TV Last Night And This Morning
MSNBC's Olbermann took a look at what would happen should the 22nd amendment be changed:
More Olbermann, on Clinton's proposal: "Now, he can take the controversy out of this by simply saying, any repeal should have a reverse grandfather clause about it not applying to, say, any president elected after the year 1996. But, seriously, Mr. Clinton makes an interesting point. If you changed it from no more than two terms in a lifetime to no more than two consecutive terms in a lifetime, you would be acknowledging that presidents are no longer so old and worn out that they are leaving office and almost immediately leave life."
Olbermann continues: "Consider [a] hypothetical election of 2016. Former two-term President Clinton would be 70 years and two months old. Former -- for the sake of argument -- two-term President Bush would be 70 years and four months old. When first elected, Ronald Reagan was 69 years and 11 months old. A heck of a campaign that would be. For one thing, it would break the tie in that Gallup poll from the other day about who was greatest president ever, the one that Clinton and Bush tied for third place in. ... And, of course, the Bush-Clinton race of 2016 would be necessary, because the sitting chief executive, the one who presumably succeeded Mr. Bush in 2009 and then got reelected in 2012 cannot serve a third consecutive term. That would be, of course, the 44th president of the United States, Alfred Sharpton Jr" ("Countdown," 5/29).
MSNBC's Scarborough, on term limits ending: "It would be the greatest political showdown in American history. In the blue corner, from Little Rock by way of Harlem, weighing in at approximately 230 pounds, depending on his latest McDiet, his party's great white hope, a charismatic powerhouse, the comeback kid, former President William Jefferson Clinton. ... And in the red corner, his opponent, the reigning champ, hailing from Crawford, Texas, and weighing in at around 185 pounds, coming off his latest seven-minute mile, popular Republican president, beloved commander in chief, President George 'Wanted Dead or Alive' Bush. Bush vs. Clinton, the leaders of their parties, the only heavyweights left standing in American politics. It's the election this country should be having in 2004" ("Scarborough Country," 5/29).
CNN's Begala: "The 22nd amendment is a disgrace. The genius of our Constitution is that ... that it limits the government. Twenty-second Amendment limits the people. It's wrong. It prevents people from deciding who should be their president. If they want a third Reagan term in the '80s, they should have had it. If they want a third, fourth, fifth Clinton term in the '90s, in the 21st century, they should have it. People should be free to pick their president" ("Crossfire," 5/29).
Dem strategist Donna Brazile: "They don't call Bill Clinton the comeback kid for nothing. I hope he comes back one day to help clean up the mess that's been created after he left the office" ("American Morning," CNN, 5/30).
National Review's Goldberg: "I love how he's talking how he's not really talking about himself. He is imagining like he's saying, 'I'm imagining a giant animal with a long nose and big ear that eats peanuts, but I'm not talking about elephants'" ("American Morning," CNN, 5/30).
Ex-Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL), on Clinton running again: "Well, it would be an entertaining prospect. But the reality is that we don't have that in our Constitution and we don't have it for a very good reason. I think the idea of concentrating power for too long in any one person or letting that person or regime come back is just not the right thing and not the American thing to do. We speak for balance in our country today. And I think, after President Roosevelt was in office for so many terms, we realized that we needed to change the Constitution and limit that" ("Scarborough Country," MSNBC, 5/29).
Newsweek's Fineman: "Listen, I've talked to people today who talk to Clinton all the time, and they said what's really driving him here is not narcissism necessarily as much as it is kind of a political jealousy. You were remember back in the mid-1990s, he was at a dinner party here in Washington. He mused aloud to people, 'God, I wish I was governing in times of crisis because then I could be like Franklin Roosevelt.' He looks at President Bush in the Oval Office now, dealing with 9/11 and its aftermath, and looks at that and say, 'I could have been that guy. I could have had my chance at greatness.' And that's what's driving him to make the comments. ... Unfinished business. That and the fact that he's kibitzing with all the 2000 Democratic candidates. He's calling them. They're not calling him. And his wife has a book coming out in a month, and he's going to have his own book coming out in a year" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 5/29).
Human Events' Terry Jeffrey, on the Clinton feeling "unfinished": "Well, his whole life is self-absorption. And, clearly, he's talking about himself. Otherwise, we'd say, not a third successive term, but you come back later, and you're going to logically change it, you would change it so would so back and run for a third term. But also, it's another example Bill Clinton having no respect for American traditions because it's not just the 22nd Amendment that says you don't serve for a third term. It's Washington's tradition. George Washington said we need a president to lead so we can have a citizen chief executive. Roosevelt broke that, so they did this 22nd Amendment" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 5/29).
MSNBC's Matthews, on getting a member of Congress to repose the 22nd amendment repeal: "I think Hillary Clinton should ask Chuck Schumer, her partner, to get the ball rolling. That will cause some trouble!" ("Hardball," 5/29).

:)

lennart
01-06-03, 15:42
Bush en Clinton onder een hoedje.

Met de toekomstige gefixede vote per computer, kunnen Bush en Clinton tot in de eeuwigheid Dictator worden van het 4de rijk :(

Dan nog liever Lyndon H. Larouche :moe:

mrz
01-06-03, 15:44
De Amerikaanse politiek begint steeds meer op 1 grote familievete te lijken.......

Humor! :haha: :melig: