Salon.com People | A bland antidote for Bill 'n' Al fatigue: George W.

Whenever I want to remind myself just how far gone the democratic party was before Clinton saved it from total irrelevance a la the green party and the like, I just have to read Ms. Paglia. It's not that I find her too left, too lesbian, too nasty or any of these things. What I object to is the constant whining that everything sucks, and that had just this one thing, whatever that is on any particular day, gone the right way, the world would be rosy. She has developed a particular ire for Clinton in recent years. That's understandable, but when she lashes out about all the time that was lost, and had he resigned, Al Gore would have spared us two years of scandal and legislative paralysis, I have two questions. First, what does she see as having not passed solely because of Clinton. Second, has she totally forgotten the battle being waged in parallel to Lewinsky against Gore with the Buddhist temple? Does she think that had the fanatical right succeeded in ousting Clinton would not have gone full steam ahead with a hanging jury against Al Gore? The short-sightedness is astonishing, and is indicative of why the democrats floundered so often before Clinton. By constantly looking backwards at past defeats and dwelling on them rather than keeping focus on the job at hand, the democrats were too easily distracted and taken off message until they lost any coherent message beyond far left ranting.

Clinton tried to show that the way to move past problems, whatever they may be, is to focus on the job at hand. Let the American people see that you're focused and undeterred from doing their business, and they'll reward you with four more years. Gore too often got distracted with recanting, over and over, misrepresentations of his past deeds, rather than showing the country over and over how hard he's worked and is working for them. That is worth, at least, 600 votes in Florida.
- posted by levinson @ 1/17/2001 10:30:00 AM