They just won't grow up, ever!

Think about it.  Bob Woodward helped bring down Richard Nixon.  Within his lifetime, the country has seen the rise and fall of Joe McCarthy.  J. Edgar Hoover headed the FBI.  George Wallace ran for President, twice!  Jesse Helms had a long and powerful career as a United States Senator.  Tom DeLay ran the US House of Representatives.  We are finishing up eight years of the puppet Presidency of George W. Bush.

Throw Lyndon Johnson in there.

And what American politicians have gotten deepest under his skin?

The Clintons.

"She never goes away, she and her husband."

This is the case for most of the Washington Press Corps.

The most senior and influential journalists and pundits have been alive to see some of the most despicable and destructive characters to ever occupy the American stage and yet none of them seem to be able to get through a conversation or an op-ed piece without taking a shot at Bill and Hillary.

Which just goes to show you.  You can destroy thousands of lives with lies and false accusations.  You can start wars and engineer coups to bring down legitimate governments.  You can run a Presidential campaign based on hatred and racial resentments.  You can use your office as a United States Senator to advance an agenda of racism and religious bigotry.  You can turn the US House of Representatives into a Protection Racket.  You can start an unnecessary war based on lies and then go and lose it, let a great American city drown, trash the Constitution, and oversee the greatest financial meltdown since 1929. 

But you can't be a Democrat and a successful politician after the Washington Insiders have decided you just aren't their kind of people.

They never grow up, Woodward and his ilk.

Comments

[Falstaff]

I wasn't going to comment -- my usual policy when I can't think of anything interesting to say. (I know, I know, I'm not that interesting when I DO comment either.) But I just wanted to express how much I liked this piece. It says the stuff that I would like to have said. I've never fully understood just why Bill Clinton pissed the Villagers off so much (HRC I understand at least a little; they're so retrograde as a group that an unapologetic, independent professional who makes no bones about her preference for her career over appearances really freaks them out), and I always enjoy watching you watching them freaking out. As it were.

[Apostate]

Oh so true. You just summed up the last five years of The Daily Howler. If poor Bob Somerby goes back that far.

But yeah. Inexplicable. Childish. Infuriating.

[Ralph H.]

You nailed it. Same Washington Insiders (why didn't they think of THAT when they renamed the Bullets?) who decided to name an aircraft carrier after the segregationist John Stennis instead of the many, many far more worthy figures in our history. Why is there no USS Harriet Tubman? [Sorry for getting off-topic.] Personal note-- I've never met HRC but my niece did, working for a couple of years in the First Lady's Correspondence Office back in the mid-90s, & she remains a fervent Hillary loyalist. Through her good offices my wife, daughter & I were fantastically lucky enough to spend ~15 minutes with President Clinton getting filmed for a 1996 DNC campaign commercial. He really does have impressive people skills, which is another way of saying that he's a very nice guy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[julia]

I'm pretty sure I know what about the Clintons pissed them off.

They were all excited about them during the election. Gave them the benefit of the doubt. Lofted the new kids into town on a cloud of press enthusiasm.

Then they realized that the two of them were in the best address in town, and they felt no need at all to hang with the cliffdwellers.

Imagine. They thought you could be s0meone in Washington without the people who decide who the someones in Washington are - just because a bunch of people who David Broder would have interviewed if they mattered voted for them.

The last twenty years has been the second act of Carrie. Nancy Allen's character didn't give a rat's ass about Sissy Spacek's character - but she did care very deeply about her segniorial right to decide her fate...

[julia]

That would, of course, be seignorial.

sigh.

[Redbeard]

Did you see Newsweek's Jon Meacham snark anout the Clintons on The Daily Show? The audience gave him a cold response.

[Uncle Merlin]

Its time to Nuke the Washington Insiders, they've been hiding too long behind "civility" as it were. Now,... Where's that button to turn on Skynet??? I've misplaced it yet again....damn!

[Bill Altreuter]

In a funny way permanent Washington is like society in a Henry James novel. If you aren't "from" Washington it is difficult for permanent Washington to warm up to you. You don't have to be from DC to be permanent Washington-- if you are a member of the bureaucracy, or Hill staff, or press, and you aren't figuring on leaving after the next election cycle then the people who come into town every four or eight years are just members of the circus who roll in at regular intervals, then roll out. From your vantage the real work gets done by permanent Washington, and that includes showing the rubes the ropes. Some people get it, and some never do. The Reagans got it by bringing Hollywood glamor to town, and inviting permanent Washington to participate. They say that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, and there is more than a gram of truth to it. Carter did not do it-- he and his people were outsiders, and stayed outsiders, but at least they went away, back to whatever dreary place they were from originally. The Clintons were around for eight years-- the maximum time you can be around unless you are part of permanent Washington-- and they were disruptive. And they won't leave. They insist on making the story about themselves, instead of about the people in permanent Washington, like Bob Woodward.

Oddly, the fact of permanent Washington used to help with governance, at least on the Hill. Just because you disagreed with someone politically didn't mean you couldn't socialize with a person, and this resulted in a measure of civility which fostered compromise. You couldn't find two people more different politically than Orin Hatch and Teddy Kennedy, but they are good pals, and have worked across the aisle on a number of issues. In recent years, one hears, the members don't hang out in DC-- they go home to raise money-- and the result has been an increase in divisive partisanship.

[Paul Gottlieb]

Except that Bill Clinton is a successful politician, with an almost unbroken history of electoral success, who brought us eight years of unbroken prosperity and relative peace. Then he left office with sky high approval ratings and went out and became very rich as well as raising billions for charity. Sadly for them, Bob Woodward is just Bob Woodward and Maureen Dowd is just Maureen Dowd.

[John]

George Wallace ran for President, twice!

Actually, George Wallace ran for president four times - he ran in a couple of Democratic primaries in 1964, then as an independent in 1968, then in the Democratic primaries again in 1972 and 1976.