Positively Clintonian

Every day, it seems, the presidential campaign trail offers up new news. Mike Huckabee has lost even more weight; Barack Obama is an empty suit; Dennis Kucinich has seen yet another UFO—these are the sorts of important stories those attuned to the presidential struggle learn.

And here comes a new—and positively shocking—tidbit: Bill Clinton didn’t exactly tell the truth when he recently stated, in the course of cheerleading for his wife’s candidacy, he opposed the Iraq War from the very start. Even The New York Times, the unofficial booster of all things Clintonian, couldn’t quite bail the former president out of this remark.

After all, it isn’t quite—to use a word with which Bill Clinton shows little familiarity—true that he was dead-set against the Iraq War, though he did hope for a longer period of time for weapons inspectors to do their job. And thus—perish the thought!—it turns out that the former president was playing a little fast and loose with the truth.

As you might well imagine, the television chat shows are all abuzz about this tidbit of information. And, as you also might imagine, the folks at Fox News are the most enthusiastic about pushing this story. Bill Clinton lied! Bill Clinton lied!

Well, gee: Color us completely surprised. Bill Clinton isn’t a beacon of veracity? What will they tell us next, that he also isn’t a dedicated monogamist?

Now, don’t get us wrong, dear reader: We firmly believe that Bill Clinton was, overall, a decent president when it came to matters of domestic policy. The 1996 welfare reform bill was a grand success, and the economy was good.

Sure, Slick Willy wasn’t as effective on the foreign policy front. Yasir “She’s My Baby” Arafat single-handedly demolished his Herculean efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Further, Bill Clinton quixotically treated Islamist terrorism as a law enforcement issue—which led to its great escalation during his tenure.

Still, President Clinton did remove Milosevic from the Balkans, and he did so without turning to the UN Security Council for a vote. So he wasn’t all bad.

But news that he isn’t exactly a latter-day George Washington? Oh, come on! That isn’t news at all.

Pretty soon, they’ll tell us that Rudy Giuliani has had a few wives. Boy, won’t that startling revelation turn a few heads.