Signature Quotes: Politics: The Clintons, Page 2

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"In 1991, [Vice President] Gore cited Bush's China policy as a reason he should be defeated for reelection, charging Bush sent his emissaries to toast the butchers of Tiananmen Square.'"

Deborah Orin in the New York Post, March 26, 1997, the day after Gore drank champagne with Chinese Premier Li Peng, who helped plan the Tiananmen massacre 


"Bill Clinton's title doesn't shield him from his libido," -- Las Vegas Review-Journal. 
If you voted for Clinton in the last election, you can't take a dump here. Your asshole is in Washington DC. - Men's room Outback Steakhouse. Tacoma, Washington 
In a surprise news conference called today, Clinton said that Paula Jones simply misunderstood him when he said he was "looking for a new head of state." -- Dennis Miller 
If Paula Jones' lawsuit against Bill Clinton is allowed to go forward, can Hillary be indicted for tampering with the evidence? 
'You're smart. Let's keep this between ourselves.' - Bill Clinton to Paula Jones 
PRESIDENT.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Washington D.C. (Y/n)? 
"Having long championed traditional Democratic causes, I simply cannot accept Mr. Clinton's shameless election-year surge to the right as his chosen means of winning a second term. And like most if not all traditional Democrats, I have grave reservations about the Clintons' morality and ethics. In my view there is now probable cause to consider our president and First Lady as felons, who are likely to be indicted after the Nov. 5 election." -- Jerome M. Zeifman op-ed, former Democrat chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate Hearings, The Wall Street Journal, 10/25/96 
"There is no evidence that Bill Clinton has lied. He's done nothing illegal. He has what I would call the politician's disease. He has tailored the truth to adapt to the reality of running in a conservative southern state." -- Eleanor Clift, Contributing Editor to Newsweek and former White House reporter, on McLaughlin Group, September 12, 1992. 
"If you allow him to drive the golf cart, he'll run straight into a tree." Webster Hubbel on Bill Clinton, spoken on "Politically Incorrect
"Webb, I want to know two things, who killed J.F.K. and are there UFOs?" -- Bill Clinton to Justice Department offical Webster Hubbel (Prior to Mr. Hubble being forced to leave office in order to serve a term in a federal prison). 
"The American elite is almost beyond redemption. Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong.  Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists.  Life is one great moral mush -- sophistry washed down with Chardonnay.  The ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes...  It is they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while their 'betters' were derelict." -- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, the unreported stories, Regnery Publishing, Nov. 1997 
"Bill Clinton does not have the moral fiber to be a mass murderer." -- Nobel Peace Prize recipient Dr. Henry Kissinger, Spring 1997 
"We all look forward with great pleasure to four years of wonderful, inspiring speeches, full of wit, poetry, music, love and affection, plus more goddamn nonsense." - News commentator David Brinkley, Election night 1996, speaking about the upcoming second term of the Clinton Administration. 
"Remember, this is the guy [Castro] who allowed the Soviets to base nuclear missiles in his country aimed at the U.S.--that doesn't get you "Most Favored Nation" Trade status, even if you paid the Clinton '96 Presidential Campaign a sizeable bribe (it did however work for China...)." -- Harold Hale 
"If he's [President Clinton] not telling the truth, I think the consequences will be astronomical," former White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers speaking on NBC's Today show. 
"If true, they're not only politically damaging, but could lead to impeachment proceedings." -- ABC Political Analyst & former Clinton Advisor George Stephanopoulos 
"Look, I will deny it so he will not get screwed in the case, but I'm going to get screwed personally." -- Monica Lewinski 
"You think the boy would learn." -- Gennifer Flowers, whom President Clinton has admitted having an affair with, on his sexual relationship with 21 year old White House Intern Monica Lewiwsky. 
"The ironic thing here is you have a president who is possessed with how he is going to be judged by history. Regardless of what happens on the legal end, this is what he's going to be remembered for," Schnur said. "When you stop being compared to Richard Nixon and start being being compared to Warren Harding, history doesn't look real good." 
"Clinton might manage to save his job, but politically he's finished already.
He can forget his ambitious domestic policy projects."
Germany's Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper
(The Washington Post, "Scandal Prompts European Concerns," 1-27-98) 
"No one ever lies. People often do what they have to do to make their story sound right." -- William Ginsburg, attorney for Monica Lewinsky [alleged oral sex partner of President Clinton], Boston Globe, Feb. 8, 1998 
"...by then however, the bleeding in the Gaullup Poll had dropped Nixon to just 48 perent approval in the first week of May--a drop of 20 percentage points since January. And that rating would keep on falling through the 25% level before Nixon's resignation in August 1974."
-- Congressional Quarterly 
"If I didn't kick Bill Clinton's ass every day, he wouldn't be worth anything." - HRC, Bloodsport pg 91 
"If Reganomics works at all, Whitewater could become the western hemisphere's mecca." - HRC in a 1981 letter to Jim McDougal, Bloodsport 
"Mike McCurry said today the President denies ever having an affair with this woman and he is going about his normal daily routine. Denying having an affair with a woman pretty much is Clinton's normal daily routine." -- Jay Leno 
"Since Nichols and Clinton have socialized together, the movie was dismissed in advance as an apologia. As it turns out, the director's understanding of Clinton allowed him to create a presidential portrait that in many ways is more damning than any right-wing caricature, because it feels so real." - Time Magazine (3/9/98) on the movie Primary Colors 
"For the second straight year, the number of wiretaps by Clinton administration law enforcement agents weighed in at an all-time record level. Last year federal officials sought and received authorization to install listening devices 554 times as opposed to 450 in 1993, 340 in the last year of the Bush Administration, and 293 in the last year of the Reagan administration." -- From the July 1995 Communications of the ACM, p. 10 
Al Gore - Informationally deprived 
But January 1996, the White House belatedly released a crucial memo written by then-White House administrator David Watkins. The memo, written in 1993, made it clear that Mrs. Clinton was the guiding force behind the firings. "In light of the first lady's insistence for immediate action," Watkins wrote, "the abrupt manner of dismissal, from my perspective, was the only option." There would be "hell to pay," Watkins continued, if he "failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the first lady's wishes." 
Pat Buchanan:
"I'd give the movie [Primary Colors] an A-. But, I will say this, this is a bleak picture that Presidential politics is about corruption and smear and dirt, and I think it paints a horrible and false picture of presidential politics and politics in general." 
Fred Barnes:
"I'd give the film [Primary Colors] a B+. It was enthralling, pretty good. But, my objection is that it is pro-Clinton. That it says, though he's a philanderer, and he's a liar, and so on, because he's a compassionate liberal, that makes everything all right." 
Mort Kondracke:
"[Primary Colors] is a very good movie. I'd say B+/A-, and its portrayal of Clinton is devastating. He comes off as a sleaze bag." 
John McLaughlin:
"Congratulations, Mike Nichols [for Primary Colors]. Grade A+ for narration, scripting, insight, acting, especially Kathy Bates. I agree with Mort. It is a very, very unflattering portrayal of Jack Stanton, AKA Bill Clinton." 
'James Carville, "the Cajun cur who will say anything, do anything to help Clinton. He's not in the media, but he is a mean machine. Carville called Paula Jones 'trailer camp trash,' a commodity with which he has had much experience.'"' -- Arkansas Democrat Gazette columnist John Robert Starr 
"In short, it is probably the prevailing opinion in Washington that Bill Clinton is the most mediocre president ever re-elected in the 20th century." -- Stephen Hess, senior fellow in the governmental studies program at the Brookings Institution 
...Mr. McCurry [who] acknowledged at a Feb. 24 briefing that White House aides, behind the scenes, were distributing material critical of Mr. Starr and his posecutorial team to the media. 
"Like trying to get an intern by President Clinton: Martin Brodeur devours pucks for the Devils." --
caption for a hockey promotion in a Blacksburg, VA cable-TV guide 
Don't know about the republicans, democrats or any other lock-step party but for me, I think that if I hire a man to manage a business, I am not paying him to boink the female employees, especially on company property, company time and using company lawyers to cover up for him -- JC Cooper 
"We should not reward China with improved trade status when it has continued to trade goods made by prison labor and has failed to make significant progress on human rights since the Tiananmen massacre." - Bill Clinton & Al Gore, in their 1992 book Putting People First
"President Clinton... said he actually wished he was a rich black athlete.
That way, he could get away with choking Ken Starr and stabbing his wife." -- Bill Maher, Politically Incorrect 
"Witnesses said yesterday that the Clinton administration has rejiggered federal regulations in a number of ways to prevent imposition of sanctions against China for selling missiles to Pakistan and Iran." -- Washington Post, June 12, 1998
"I'd be happy to give him [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal," -- Nina Burleigh, former Time magazine White House correspondent, now with Mirabella magazine.
"If it gets me off, it must be right" -- Motto of the William Jefferson Clinton School of Public Ethics, also motto of the Wlliam Jefferson Clinton School of Human Relations.
"Mike McCurry is good at his job, seeking political advantage on any day possible." -- Tim Russert, NBC News
"She goes to state dinners with her lesbian friends,
Makes big investments with high dividends,
Forgets to pay taxes but then makes amends,
That's why the First Lady is a tramp."
-Don Imus
There was a time when race-baiting Democrats like George Wallace would stand on the schoolhouse steps to deny blacks the right to enter good schools.
Today, race-baiting Democrats like Bill Clinton stand on the schoolhouse steps to deny blacks the right to leave bad schools.
"...a skirt-chaser who was very smart and very effective in some ways but also undermined his standing by the charges of moral inconstancy." -- August 17, 1998 -- Presidential historian Robert Dallek predicts how Clinton will be remembered 10 years hence.
"I think the president [Bush] played racial politics with the Haitian refugees. I wouldn't be shipping those poor people back." -- Canidate Bill Clinton (Miami Herald, 3/4/92)
"[T]hose who do leave Haiti for the United States by boat will be stopped and directly returned by the United States Coast Guard." -- President Bill Clinton, radio address, 1/14/93
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Matt Lauer.
LAUER: Let me take you and your husband out of this for a second. Bill and Hillary Clinton aren’t involved in this story. If an American president had an adulterous liaison in the White House and lied to cover it up, should the American people ask for his resignation?
HR CLINTON: Well, they should certainly be concerned about it.
LAUER: Should they ask for his resignation?
HR CLINTON: Well, I think that if all that were proven true, I think that would be a very serious offense.
"Perjury is not excused by an apology compelled by overwhelming evidence and delivered under pressure. The President entered into a morally repugnant relationship, he lied under oath and he almost certainly used government resources and employment opportunities to encourage Monica Lewinsky's silence. This is no longer a question of private morality or political popularity. Certainly, we could spare the country a great deal of pain by abandoning the rule of law. That's too high a price. With great sadness, I have concluded that President Clinton should resign or face impeachment." -- Rep. Paul McHale (D-Pa.), 8/18/98
On Aug. 6, 1974, three days before Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, the Arkansas Democrat reported:
"Bill Clinton, Democratic candidate for the 3rd Congressional District, said, 'There's nothing left to say. There's not any point now in his putting the country through an impeachment since he isn't making any pretense of innocence now.'
"Clinton said he believed the president should have stayed in office and resisted resignation if Nixon thought himself innocent. But now that the president has admitted wrongdoing, he should resign, Clinton said."
"No question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI is an impeachable offense." -- Bill Clinton, ARKANSAS GAZETTE, August 8, 1974, page 7-A.
"Every time [President] Bush talks about trust it makes chills run up and down my spine. The way he has trampled on the truth is a travesty of the American political system." -- Bill Clinton, Oct. 28, 1992
"I know something about trust. I got my trust the old-fashioned way. I earned it." -- Bill Clinton, Oct. 28, 1992
Andie McDowell on Letterman : "Until he confessed, I believed he was innocent."

Letterman replied "Oh, so YOU'RE the one!"


"Clinton's own assertions clearly can no longer be believed. The president lied to everyone about the affair. He repeatedly invoked claims of executive and attorney-client privilege, arranged joint-defense agreements, attacked his accusers for exposing the facts, and on and on. All with one goal in mind: to keep himself from ever having to confess the affair, let alone apologize to the nation for it," -- USA Today editorial 9/10/98
"I do not want my children to believe that the only standard of truth to which they, much less a president of the United States, must aspire is legal accuracy." Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., on the Senate floor.
Exhibit 1:"The president has pursued a strategy of deceiving the American people and Congress since January 1998, delaying and impeding the criminal investigation for seven months and deceiving the American people and Congress in August 1998."
-- Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, in a report to Congress accusing President Clinton of obstruction of justice, witness tampering, abuse of his presidential powers and perjury -- evidence that may constitute grounds for an impeachment.
Exhibit 2:"Impeachment should apply to those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to society itself."
--Hillary Rodham and the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee, 1974, quoting from Alexander Hamilton in one of the Federalist Papers.

"If I could have remembered the conversation, I would say that up until now, I thought that sigh of relief was because I agreed to support him on some issue."
-- Former representative Jim Chapman (D-Tex.), who, according to the Starr report, was one of three members of Congress with whom President Clinton spoke on the phone while being serviced sexually by Monica Lewinsky.
"I ask that all Americans demonstrate in their personal and public lives... the high ethical standards that are essential to good character and to the continued success of our Nation."
President Bill Clinton, October 17, 1997. "National Character Counts Week."
"So intense is Mr. Clinton's obsession with Mr. Starr that he has gone so far as to tell several members of his administration that the prosecutor was partly to blame for his affair with [Monica] Lewinsky, according to an official who heard the remarks. Mr. Clinton told these associates that he was so angry about the intrusiveness of Mr. Starr's inquiries that he sought comfort in a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky." -- New York Times, September 20, 1998
"I wanted to be legal without being particularly helpful," -- William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States.
Erica Jong, a sensualist among feminists, reminds us that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. "We've forgotten that the alpha male of the tribe gets the youngest, most nubile females, with or without foreplay," she writes. "It's like that with chimps, gibbons, and even Presidents of the United States."
"[W]hen I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale." -- Candidate Bill Clinton (The New York Times, 3/30/92)
"The other thing we have to do is to take seriously the role in this problem of . . . older men who prey on underage women. . . . There are consequences to decisions and . . .one way or the other, people always wind up being held accountable."
--Bill Clinton, June 13, 1996, in a speech endorsing a national effort against teen pregnancy - Words he dare not say, [USNews: 9/21/98]
"I don't have a good memory now. The memory loss has been increased by the pressure of your four-year investigation." - Bill Clinton, before the Grand Jury.
"For a good time, call 202-456-1414 and ask for Bill. If a woman named Hillary answers, ask for the Bible study group." -- Spotted scribbled on the wall of a restaurant's ladies' room.
On "Rivera Live," [Ann Coulter] said Clinton's use of his secretary, Betty Currie, "is so craven and cowardly. It's like a hostage holding a baby in front of him ... He would use taxpayer-funded jobs to pay off his little government-funded brothel."
"We're now at the point that it's beyond whether or not this guy is a horny hick. I really think it's a question of his mental stability. He really could be a lunatic. . . . I think it is a rational question for Americans to ask whether their president is insane." -- Ann Coulter On "Equal Time"
"He is an enormously gifted and richly qualified leader for our nation but someone who is exasperatingly stupid in his personal life," Mike McCurry in his first public lecture (October 19, 1998, University of Pittsburgh) since resigning as White House press secretary on 10/1/98
Number of U.S. households that chose watching professional wrestling over the president's televised apology in August: 6,379,000. -- Harper's Index, November 1998.
"I was about to give Clinton a medium salute, but then he had to preach to black ministers that the negotiation had been part of 'my personal journey of atonement.' This one was for Monica? That self-absorbed confusion of his need for political forgiveness with the nation's need for an effective chief executive was smarmy and solipsistic. As JFK would say, 'no class.'" -- New York Times columnist William Safire on the pre-1998 election Mid-East Peace Deal.
"arkancide" (ARE-kan-side): A murder made to look like a suicide. Derives its name from its frequent occurrence in Arkansas, where those performing autopsies check first with the local Democratic Party staffer before declaring the "medically determined cause of death."
  • Best known illustration: a young man who inappropriately stumbled upon a drug delivery at the infamous Mena, Arkansas airport. He had been stabbed twice in the back and then dumped on a railroad track. The coroner's report? "Fell asleep on a railroad track; run over by a train."
    Cost of Starr Investigation (4 years): $ 40 Million
    Cost of Clinton's China Trip (9 days): $ 45 Million
    Increase in National Debt (1 day): $ 59 Million
    Cost of Clinton's Missile Attack (2 hours): $ 100 Million
    "This is a White House that prizes loyalty over maturity, politics over government, polling over principles, a place where righteousness is measured by rapid response." -- Columnist Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 6/23/96
    Guys like Schlesinger, who served Democratic Presidents going back to JFK and LBJ. And from academia, breeding grounds of liberalism. These folks are about as "objective" as a southern Jim Crow jury looking at a black man accused of murder or rape. -- 'Archie' Ridemfi, in alt.politics.clinton
    "Mr. Clinton fired his surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders, a brave and decent woman, for mentioning the word masturbation in a discussion of adolescent sexual health. He's imposed warrantless searches of public housing. He's throwing women off welfare because their moral standards don't meet what he says they ought to be. He's a zero-tolerance, law-and-order Democrat who now, suddenly, has turned into a civil libertarian, you'll notice." -- Christopher Hitches, of Vanity Fair on Meet The Press
    "The president's crimes are high and low and indisputable, but what is worse, his defense cynically exploits a sexual broad-mindedness that he himself doesn't share. Unmasked by the Lewinsky affair, Bill and Hillary Clinton stand revealed as Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in scanty liberal clothing." -- Christopher Hitches, of Vanity Fair
    "...because five Americans murdered by Pinochet. There's no statute of limitations on murder. The president made a big speech saying people who try and kill Americans, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide; made that speech on the day of his grand jury deposition. Not a squeak from either him or the Justice Department ever since this case came up. And I think there must be something in the words sovereign immunity that appeal to Bill Clinton and perhaps to Janet Reno." -- Christopher Hitches, of Vanity Fair on Meet The Press
    "Only in America can a homeless Veteran sleep in a cardboard box, While a draft-dodger sleeps in the White House."
    Tart tongues are tittering about the lovefest Hillary Clinton enjoyed this week on the Rosie O'Donnell show. The two wore nearly identical dark pant suits, and the hefty hostess kept referring to her guest affectionately as "Hill."...Time magazine [is] preparing to anoint Hillary -- who's already on the cover of Vogue -- as its Person of the Year. And yesterday, Hillary was back on TV on Today giving Katie Couric a tour of the white House Christmas decorations. The Horndog-in-Chief barely got a word in edgewise. When Couric asked what they were thankful for this year, Hillary said, "We're healthy, and we're sill here to do the job we were sent here to do." Notice the use of the word "we." -- Page Six, New York Post, December 10, 1998
    The Clintons represent the worst in modern American politics: ruthless ambition over a desire to serve; preoccupation with political funding over a fair system; opportunism over principle; betrayal of any cause or policy over taking a stand; and a desperation to gain and keep office over any obligation to honor its responsibilities." -- Christopher Reed, in the Los Angles Times.
    "When a man is defended by James Carville, Geraldo Rivera, Alan Dershowitz and Larry Flynt, it seems almost superfluous to convict him. The very fact that he attracts partisans of this caliber is itself a kind of verdict." -- Joseph Sobran, the same syndicated columnist who observed earlier this year that President Clinton won't have any airports named after him now, except maybe the remote grassy landing strip at Mena in western Arkansas.
    "You can see why guys admire Clinton. You have sex on the job, you tell lies, you cheat on the wife and you get away with it. Most guys can only dream about this." -- Jay Leno
    "And I thought, you know, when you boil it all down -- if you put it in a centrifuge and boiled it all down --would you want to be in a foxhole with this guy? And the bottom line is, not me." -- Actor and Democrat James Woods on President Bill Clinton while on the CBS "News" This Morning - 1/5/1999
    The President of the United States (William J. Clinton) said in sworn testimony before a grand jury that the accuracy of his testimony in another legal proceeding depended-and I quote-"on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." -- Ann Coulter
    Beltway Bumper Stickers:
    "The duty of a president to obey the law varies inversely with the Dow Jones average." - George F. Will
    "A question that has no right to be asked doesn't deserve a truthful answer." - Arthur Schlesinger, a partisan Clinton supporter.
    "Ugly times call for ugly tactics" - Salon magazine regarding its disclosure of Henry Hyde's affair.
    "If Jesus Christ had taken a poll, he would never have preached the gospel." - Henry Hyde
    "As long as Clinton upholds affirmative action and defends abortion rights, then his personal excesses and timid policies are to be defended at all costs. Honesty and integrity are dispensable attributes for a president who cleaves to the correct-thinking positions on gender and race. That is the moral swamp in in which liberals have become mired because of their passionate embrace of a political cynic named Bill Clinton." -- William Shapiro, The New Republic
    The first article for Richard Nixon was that he lied to the American people. That's what the House said. That was the first article of impeachment.
    Bill Clinton lied to the American people. Richard Nixon resigned. This president stuffed it in our face. That's what he thinks of the presidency, and that's a tragedy for this country." -- Sen. Larry E. Craig, Idaho
    "The White House counted on Democrats to do the corrupt thing, on Republicans to do the cowardly thing, and virtually all of the major media to applaud them both," -- Columnist Michael Kelly, on why Bill Clinton will not be convicted.
    "Even though its outcome had been predetermined when the Democrat senators decided to vote as one block, the courage the 'managers' displayed in presenting their case under a vicious barrage of organized ridicule calls for recognition and applause." -- Dulles Area Chapter of the National Organization for Women
    According to the Clinton Administration, salsa is considered a vegetable in school lunches.
    Hillary and Bill have done a lot for America in the past 6+ years.
    The problem is how long will it take to repair what they've done.
    -- Don Kennedy (Dexter, Mo.)
    "I am against any legislation or regulation on gun control that goes beyond the current law, and am in support of the NRA position on gun control.  I am opposed to any additional requirements for registration of handguns or rifles beyond current law." -- William J. Clinton in letter to the NRA, Octobe 11, 1982
    "The president's budget seems to have been written with a purpose to obscure." - Herbert Stein, former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, in the Wall Street Journal, March 1999.
    He's got that Bill Clinton gene, too. You say, "Lonnie, are you lying to me?" And he says, "No, I swear, I'm not lying." And you say, "Lonnie, ARE YOU lying to me?" And he says, "Define lying." -- Joe-Bob Briggs
    "I think Democrats are really worried about a Clinton backlash on Gore." -- Former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, interviewed on ABC's "This Week" [4/18/99]
    "Draft dodger-disgrace to Arkansas and America. Resign and take your wife with you." -- personal ad in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 5/2/1999
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