PUBLIC NUISANCES: Happy Birthday, Mr. Ex-President/Come Home Democrats
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. Emmett T y r r e l l , J r . Happy Birthday, Mr. Ex-President WASHINGTON F ORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON has been celebrating his 60th birthday at breakneck speed and...
...On August 19, the blessed day of his birth, he observed it with family and friends at Martha's Vineyard, the proletarian purlieu where he and his wife have vacationed for over a decade, even when they were not on speaking terms...
...In an off-year election the President's party is supposed to suffer losses on Capitol Hill...
...Senators and representatives alike vacated the premises...
...At Clinton's birthday celebration in New York on October 29, I wonder if Catherine C. Mayo will put in an appearance...
...Given the many laughs he has afforded me over the years, I hope he will proceed at a more restrained pace...
...We defied the standards of our parents and declared that a war was unjust...
...Carly Simon sang "Happy Birthday" to him...
...This is an innovation in narcissism, but then Clinton and like-minded members of his 1960s generation have been innovative narcissists for decades...
...Yet she is only 59...
...Not surprisingly they are not entering their 60s in a happy frame of mind...
...President George W. Bush wants us to fight our wars on foreign soil...
...I really do feel young," the President enthused to People magazine, and of course owing to his healthy life of exercise and moderation he is...
...She opposes the Bush administration...
...She might well be the Cindy Sheehan of the moment...
...On October 29 he will be in New York, and the Rolling Stones will be there to sing "Happy Birthday" along with other Clinton favorites...
...A year or more ago the complaint heard most often about the Democratic Party was that it had not settled on a message...
...We are losing the war on terror...
...That finding supports an argument I have been making about the 1960s generation for years, to wit, the majority were not NewAge narcissists of the Clinton variety...
...caused the plane to land in Boston...
...but they are, as they admit, a unique minority...
...The president was Franklin D. Roosevelt ~OCTOBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 79...
...She and Bill are the minority within the 1960s generation...
...This is true on a whole range of matters from national security to the war on terror to the economy...
...Yet my guess is that most Americans prefer growth...
...Well, maybe he was the youngest of the men in the room...
...That is the refrain last made famous by Senator Clinton's presidential candidate in 1972, Sen...
...Doubtless, Americans are not as approving of the way he has handled the war in Iraq, but their major concern is terrorism, according to a CBS News poll conducted after the British broke up that terror ring in August...
...Surely this time the Republicans will lose seats, but I predict that they will still hang on to both houses...
...And Wal-Martjust posted a quarterly earnings decline...
...Now he is taking his birthday on the road...
...The Democrats are in a sunny mood...
...All of this means, so the Democrats believe, that they will sweep the Senate and the House this fall...
...The next day he observed the historic event on Nantucket at Smith Bagley's vacation home, Inverness, where the Clintons have freeloaded for seven years...
...So, "Come Home America...
...The Democrats have been shrieking about the economy for six years, six years that have mainly been years of economic growth...
...According to a recent Newsweek poll, 55 percent of the citizenry favor the way he is handling the war on terror and homeland security, an improvement of 11 percent over the last two months...
...Ex-President WASHINGTON F ORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON has been celebrating his 60th birthday at breakneck speed and he will be continuing to do so for months to come, according to news reports...
...This intergenerational battle is going to get fierce...
...The Democrats have a message, but the message has no resonance beyond the Democratic Party...
...As they see it we are losing in Iraq...
...All conflicts can be settled by peaceful means...
...Our 42rid president will be combining the celebration of himself with fundraising...
...This brings us to the second reason that the Republicans will maintain both houses this fall...
...For most of myworking life, I was the youngest person doing whatever I was doing.., in the room...
...In 2003, while writing for a Pakistani newspaper, the Daily Times of Pakistan, Mayo declared, "I am an American child of the 1960s...
...I could not bear to see him make another run to the emergency room...
...Frankly, I think most Americans would also approve of profiling, and in fact I suspect our government will be profiling rather soon...
...My guess is that the electorate will again reject "Come Home America...
...All the criticism from the Democrats over our war in Iraq and our war on terror amounts to being what an earlier president chided his war critics as, to wit: "Back Seat Drivers...
...Watch for some truly bizarre antics from them all as they trudge off to oblivion, and forget not the 2008 election...
...It is indicative of the dreadful condition of the Democrats that the President's party actually gained seats in the last offyear election...
...The Democrats have no appealing alternative to the Republicans...
...One of the most historic events taking place in the first decade of the 21st century is that the members of the 1960s generation are squaring off for one more political battle to claim the identity of the most momentous political generation of the 20th century...
...Now the American electorate is going to have the next three months to weigh the merits of the Democratic alternative to the President's approach to national security...
...She really has not changed all that much since then, nor have the rest of the Democrats...
...The sudden whitening of his hair since his retirement from the White House and shrinkage of his once fleshy physique should admonish voluptuaries everywhere of the potential health threats from recreational sex...
...I hate it," Clinton said regarding his 60th birthday...
...When she turns 60 she may become even more morose than her cogenerationist, Bill...
...Two days later the United States invaded Iraq...
...Hillary Rodham Clinton puts it, "We still have not done what we need to do to protect our ports, our borders, our bridges, our transit systems, our rail lines--it's a long list...
...Come Home Democrats WASHINGTON W ELL, IT WAS A VERY PLEASANT time this summer to be in Washington...
...Typical of them is another famous politician who just turned 60, President George W. Bush...
...Mayo, 59, is the lady whose disruptive behavior on an August 16 transatlantic flight to Washington, D.C...
...Their alternative is to raise taxes, which surely is an alternative to growth...
...The only outrage I have heard of in response to news reports of government surveillance has come from journalists, the ACLU, and the Democratic leadership, which is to say the Democratic leadership and its agents...
...78 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2006 R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR...
...Their solution to the war in Iraq and to the war on terror is: "Come Home America" They want our troops out of Iraq...
...At her recent court appearance in Boston she proudly wore a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and she is definitely on the Clintons' side in the present 1960s intergenerational rivalry...
...The right-wing of that generation made its mark later in the Reagan Revolution and now in the Bush administration, which is headed by a 1960s generation politician who is precisely the opposite of his left-wing rivals, the Clintons, JeanFrancois Kerry, Howard Dean, Al- Gore, et al...
...That was claptrap then and it is claptrap now...
...Actually Clinton's unhappiness at turning 60 is not typical of his age group...
...Most Americans also understand that to thwart another 9/11 the government is going to have to surveil bank transactions, communications, and travel...
...Their message is "Come Home America" Polls show Americans dissatisfied with the condition of the country...
...Early in September he celebrated his August 19 nativity in Toronto...
...Most headed off to ply their trade on their constituents...
...Now she is really mad...
...On the airplane she spoke mysteriously of some sort of relationship with al Qaeda and at one point lowered her pants and urinated in the aisle-a peace demonstration that I think all will agree clearly got out of hand...
...A recent poll of Americans turning 60 by the AARP showed that 77 percent were quite "satisfied" to be where they were in life...
...The first reason for this is that the President's insight that it is best to fight terrorists in foreign lands rather than to wait for them to arrive here is more appealing to Americans than the Democrats' "Come Home America" strategy...
...Many were simply the next generation of conventional Americans, down to earth and sensible...
...The public record suggests that the women in the room were often much younger...
...They advocate fighting the war on terror closer to home...
...George McGovern...
...As Sen...
...The leftwing of that generation became famous early with its members' protests against bourgeois America and their celebration of liberated youth...
...That is a euphemism for what all reasonable observers call the "public trough...
...but when they have to choose between a President who wants to fight our enemies abroad and the Democrats, most Americans will choose the Republicans...
...The off-year elections are approaching, and most of our federal legislators want another stint at what the Democrats call "public service...
...Most Americans agree...
Vol. 39 • October 2006 • No. 8
