WASHINGTON -- It is happening again. The media tell us there is a huge groundswell of support for Hillary to run for the presidency in 2016. Already an enormous political action committee has been formed. She is again -- as she was in 2008 -- the Inevitable Candidate and, by the way, the Inevitable President. Moreover, the mainstream media are, of course, with her.
These are what I have been calling for over 20 years the media's Episodic Apologists. Their professional lives have followed a well-worn arc since at least 1992 when the Clintons first emerged nationally -- though the arc was there in Arkansas back in the 1980s. At first, the Episodic Apologists are full of hope for the Clintons -- they have such charisma, such political promise. Then, splat, they fall headlong into a scandal of their own making -- Troopergate, Travelgate, Monicagate, Impeachment, or their incomparable exit from the White House. Of a sudden, the Episodic Apologists fall into darkest despair. "How could they? They had it all," and The Episodic Apologists' funk continues.
After the Clintons exited the White House in 2000 it sounded like this. The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt: Bill Clinton is the "albatross" of his party, he should "drop dead"; the New York Times' Bob Herbert: Clinton "has been a disaster for the Democratic Party; and the Times editorializing, the former president "has plunged further and further beneath the already low expectations of his most cynical critics."
I could go on, but then -- for no apparent reason -- the Episodic Apologists' hopes are renewed. Hope never completely dies.
To return to the present, reality is again intruding on the Episodic Apologists' hopes. Now Benghazi is again in the news. It appears that in the months preceding the attack Hillary was engaged in furthering one of her goofball boasts. The secretary of state was padding her frequent flyer account, flying hither and yon and ignoring warnings from her people on the ground in Libya. They wanted more security. They got less, and the ambassador and three others were killed. Furthermore, according to my sources, another American soldier may still be in the National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. recovering from wounds incurred during a valiant effort at relieving the besieged annex.
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And drip, drip, drip, another familiar process is auspicated. The Clintons' tawdry past begins once again to haunt them. At first, it was the lonely voice of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul noting the Democrats' hypocrisy in charging the Republicans with a "War on Women," when the Democrats' leading personality is Bill Clinton, the famed "sexual predator," to say noting of ex-Senator John Edwards and ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner, and many more. Then began the deluge. The Washington Free Beacon uncovered a mother lode of documents from Hillary's White House years. Maintained by Hillary's Arkansas friend, Diane Blair, who passed away in 2000, the documents include diary entries, letters and memos of conversations with Hillary from her embattled White House. They are candid.
They include Hillary's insight that the journalists -- the Episodic Apologists? -- have "big egos and no brains." Her overbearing mentality, "I'm used to winning and I intend to win on my own terms." And her attempts to deal with perceived enemies. For instance, she discussed with Blair the need to depict Gennifer Flowers, Bill's on-again off-again mistress of 12 years, as a "fraud, liar and possible criminal to stop this story and related stories." As for Monica Lewinsky, Hillary described her as a clever bully who seduced her helpless husband. Monica was 22, Bill 49 and president of the United States of America. Writes Blair, "It was a lapse, but she [Hillary] says to his credit he [Bill] tried to break it off, tried to pull away, tried to manage someone who was clearly a 'narcissistic loony toon'; but it was beyond control." Incidentally, in attempting to "break it off" Bill had telephone sex with Lewinsky some 15 times, often after 10:00 p.m.
I happen to know of the above nocturnal amours because I wrote of them in a 2007 book, "The Clinton Crack-Up." I got that information from intelligence operatives. They reported to me that they were not the only intelligence professionals who had this information. Most likely the French, Israelis and Russians were listening in on Bill and Monica's calls. Will the contents of these calls remain secret if Blair's documents cannot even be kept quiet?
Hillary, it is a long way to 2016.
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