The Blunderer Returns
FERGUSON, ANDREW
The Blunderer Returns by Andrew Ferguson Here in Washington we mark life in weeks- good weeks, bad weeks, weeks that end in a draw-and when the Whitewater verdicts came down last Tuesday, everyone...
...Whether from complacency, cocksureness, or (the favorite diagnosis of Washington pundits) hubris, they suddenly appeared politically tone-deaf...
...Nothing could change that...
...What had been striking about their performance over the last half-year, however, was its clarity and sure-footedness...
...This may have been hard to notice, following as it did eight months of dazzling political acrobatics, during which the president saw his poll ratings soar and those of his enemies tank...
...That's a good-looking mummy...
...The confident Clinton of the last half-year wobbled, and the earlier Clinton of right-wing lore-feckless, opportunistic, slightly flaky-looked ready to take his place...
...But the president and first lady themselves seem to be getting giddily "off message...
...drug-testing of school crossing guards?-and the phrase will spread to the electorate at large...
...With each miscalculation a trend began to emerge: an unmistakable mistake trend...
...A Peruvian anthropologist, Sonia Guill?n, called the president's remarks "tacky...
...Thompson of Wisconsin-the same reform Dole was expected to boom in a campaign event three days later...
...Can we re-up for two-and-a-half...
...Clinton is given to abstractions, as fans of her health-care plan will recall, and hence the announcement was not really an announcement, merely a recounting of private, Hegelian moments between husband and wife...
...I think we're talking about it more now...
...A few more radio addresses-on mandatory bedtime...
...At a fund-raiser in Connecticut, he mentioned the Inca mummy that was recently exhibited in Washington...
...That discipline has for the moment abandoned them...
...The mummy was 14 but died 500 years ago...
...Clinton said they might adopt an "older" child-though presumably one under the age of 14...
...Cartoonists and editorialists scoffed, but the self-parody continued through the end of May...
...Clinton went on: "We continue to talk about it...
...Maybe these are mere lapses in tactics, the president having been let down by sloppy staff work...
...And indeed, Clinton's political career has shown a pattern of fumbles, followed by recovery, followed by a period of overconfidence, which leads again to fumbles . . . and the pattern repeats...
...Surely some Democratic operative somewhere might have noted the irony (to choose the kindest word): a veteran who had a quarter of his body blown away at Anzio should not be called a "quitter" by a political opponent who, as the phrase goes, chose not to serve...
...A carload of Redskins cheerleaders could cruise up to the Front Portico in a bright red Cadillac convertible, honking the horn and shouting his name, and the president's week would still be bad...
...He told us he would lead," said the voiceover...
...Considering' may be too strong...
...Actually, the week before that was a dog too...
...News reports at the time reported a slightly different version...
...Is she too young for him, or too old...
...The obvious follow-up question to such an announcement, of course, is "Say wha...
...Clinton told Time's Walter Isaacson: "I must say we're hoping that we have another child...
...Over the past few months the president's strategy of appropriating Republican themes was incremental and subtly executed...
...The president, as we know, has been neither soldier nor sailor, and that fact was painfully emphasized in the ensuing outrage...
...A yummy mummy...
...Bizarre," said the American Legion...
...The ad opened with Bob Dole's empty Senate office...
...Voters will have other questions...
...You might question the president's taste, since the mummy did have her skull crushed during a human sacrifice...
...What was lost amid all the hand-wringing and confetti-throwing (depending on your point of view) about the president's bad week was this: The week before hadn't been so great either...
...Bennett revised the brief-over the Memorial Day weekend, appropriately enough...
...By mid-month, however, the strategy was reduced to caricature...
...I think 'talking about it...
...Or a full three...
...Ah, yes: the election...
...Even the Peruvians were agog...
...If you doubt it, consider her strange comments to Time magazine a few days after the president's remarks about his mummified Lolita...
...We'd obviously wait to get serious about it until after the election...
...The VFW objected "in the strongest possible terms...
...The ad closed with shots of President Clinton, doing the people's business in the lamplit Oval Office...
...Me-too-ism" has quickly become the favored Washington euphemism for the president's platform...
...Guill?n had opposed removing the mummy from Peru in the first place, saying it might be "damaged" in the United States-and now we know why...
...Then he told us that he was quitting, giving up, leaving behind the gridlock he helped create...
...The president is 49...
...but Isaacson collected himself admirably: "So are you considering adoption...
...Clinton] said that before she became pregnant with her daughter, Chelsea, she and her husband had seriously considered adoption...
...Mrs...
...Might the president now revise his famous bargain of 1992, "Vote for me and get two for the price of one...
...The administration was quickly in Ickes-mode, back-pedaling at great speed...
...youth curfews...
...But by the end of May, he threatened a relapse...
...The Blunderer Returns by Andrew Ferguson Here in Washington we mark life in weeks- good weeks, bad weeks, weeks that end in a draw-and when the Whitewater verdicts came down last Tuesday, everyone had to agree that the president was in for a bad week...
...During his weekly radio speeches in early May he aped conservative proposals on teen pregnancy and adoption...
...It "smells bad," said the Vietnam Veterans Coalition...
...Period...
...The day after Dole called for youth curfews in high-crime areas, the president traveled to New Orleans, where he let cry with a ringing endorsement of...
...Republicans, of course, pounced on Bennett's reasoning, but so did veterans groups...
...Hillary Clinton is 48, just the right age...
...The trend first coalesced around matters of substance, as the White House defines substance-which is to say, matters of perception...
...Next day the AP reported: "A spokesman for Mrs...
...I can give you a long list of all the places I've talked about it," Mrs...
...From the Baltimore Sun of May 11: "In response to a question, [Mrs...
...We can only wonder what number he'll be at by November 5...
...Clinton said that her interest in adoption was not new and that she and Mr...
...A more sensational example of presidential overreach came through one of his lawyers, Robert Bennett, who filed a Supreme Court brief suggesting that the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act of 1940 might indemnify the president against the sexual harassment suit of Paula Jones...
...But by late May, the president and his associates were making a series of uncharacteristic mistakes...
...The Clinton reelection committee chose to celebrate Memorial Day in its own way, by airing what has become known as the "Quitter" ad...
...Mrs...
...Or, if you're going to make the accusation, wait till after Memorial Day...
...If I were a single man," the president said, "I might ask that mummy out...
...Since his famous comments about the Astroturf in his old pickup, and especially since the unfortunate MTV appearance a few years ago in which he discussed his underwear with an audience of teenagers, the president has seemed to make extra efforts to carry himself with presidential dignity...
...Well, these are deep and muddied waters, as waters often are with the Clintons...
...We are now moving from the third stage to the fourth...
...In response to a question about adoption, Mrs...
...The error was multiple: in taste as well as in timing...
...As Fred Barnes recounts elsewhere in this issue, Clinton devoted his May 18 radio address to embracing a radical GOP welfare reform offered by Gov...
...Clinton told Jim Lehrer in an interview a week later, "including just three weeks ago in the Roosevelt Room, when I had a Mother's Day event about adoption...
...The first lady's announcement made a splash and again raised the possibility, just the suggestion, the merest hint, of rank opportunism...
...Clinton had discussed it only 'in abstract terms.'" Mrs...
Vol. 1 • June 1996 • No. 38
