Signature Quotes: Politics: The Clintons, Page 3

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"(Hillary's) most serious deficits are more personal than political. ... She is notoriously thin-skinned, and her stony aloofness makes Al Gore and Bill Bradley look like Cheech and Chong." -- Clarence Page writing on Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"Inexcuseable." -- Al Gore on Clinton's personal behavior with Monica Lewinsky, in separate interviews with NBC, ABC and CBS.
"He only defiled the Oval Office. ... But, you know, he was very good on school uniforms." -- FNC's Morton Kondracke, on Clinton's statement that he kept more promises while in office than his predecessors.
"The only reason for her to run for the Senate is to eventually run for president." -- CNBC's Chris Matthews
"The problem most people have with this president [Bill Clinton] isn't sex, it's the manner in which he deals with the truth. . . . He's not the sort of person we'll want to hear from when he leaves the White House. We won't be waiting to catch his latest op-ed article in the New York Times. It's hard to imagine him writing one." -- CNBC's Chris Matthews
"The lesson and the legacy of the Starr investigation into the Clinton administration is that a legal stonewall conducted by a presidency will succeed," -- Wall Street Journal
"Good news: Hillary Clinton is coming to New York to be our senator. They're saying now that she bought a house in Westchester. . . . It must have been very traumatic emotionally, because buying a house -- this is probably the first legal real estate deal she's been involved with." -- David Letterman, CBS "Late Show" 6/30/99
"What's the big deal? President Clinton did it." - Unidentified girl, active in an "oral-sex ring" that shocked parents and adminstrators at her Arlinton, VA middles school, Page 19, Newsweek, July 19, 1999
"LISTEN, HILLARY, GO HOME" -- A protester's sign that appeared in the background on the first day of Hillary Rodham Clinton's "listening" tour of New York state
"As a lifelong active liberal Democrat, I find the choice [between HRC & Mayor Giuliani] not difficult," "In all our campaigns, we were trying to work for decent and intelligent government. Neither Clinton can give us that. It is not in their character; and their hands are too dirty." -- Bartle Bull, a lawyer and writer who served as Robert F. Kennedy's New York City campaign manager in 1968, writes in an opinion piece published in the New York Post.
"Yesterday, the Senate voted to approve President Clinton's decision to send troops to Bosnia. And they voted to change the name of that mission to "Operation Forget About Whitewater."--David Letterman
"And it started. [In] the New York Post today, a column, oh, I won't mention the woman who wrote it but it, it's like they're going after her already on day one: she exaggerates her accomplishments, she has a sense of grandeur, she is deluded, she bends the rules for herself, she has a narcissistic personality disorder. This is gonna get really, really rough." -- ABC's Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson to former Hillary Clinton aide Lisa Caputo, July 7, 1999.
"But George, you can hear the questions now: How did you feel about the President having sex with another woman in the White House while you're First Lady. How you're gonna be sitting in the Senate one day and you might have to judge a President about lying to the public et cetera, et cetera. The questions are gonna be brutal." -- ABC's Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson to George Stephanopoulos, July 7, 1999
CNN anchor Bernard Shaw: "Now wait a minute now, this woman brings a lot of strength."
Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin: "What strength?"
Shaw: "Don't you agree that she brings a lot of strength to what she is trying to do?"
Breslin: "No, I think that the strength comes from a lot of people on television or in newspapers that just write drivel."
-- CNN's Inside Politics, July 8, 1999
"Two and a half years ago in your inaugural, you said you wanted to help the nation "repair the breach"and this morning, you called again for greater cooperation in Washington. But it seems apparent that for many people you personally remain a polarizing and divisive figure in national politics. I was wondering if you've ever reflected on why, as Mrs. Clinton I think has sometimes noted, throughout your career you've always seemed to generate such antagonism in your opponents and do you assign any responsibility to yourself for what this morning you described as the rancorous mood in Washington today?" -- Washington Post White House reporter John Harris to President Clinton at a June 25, 1999 press conference.
"Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that [Hillary Clinton]...is a congenital liar." -- William Safire
Just one week after Clinton said the economy was the strongest it had been in 30 years, the Federal Reserve reduced the prime lending rate from 8.5 percent to 8.25 percent to avert a recession.
Chrysler Corporation is adding a new car to its line to honor Bill Clinton. The Dodge Draft will begin production in Canada this year.
They say, ever since he met JFK as a kid, Bill Clinton wanted to be President in the worst possible way... And he's succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
"She's a Yankee,and many Arkansans are glad she may not come back to the state. You can't betray what you were never loyal to in the first place." -- Jerry Russell, a long-time Arkansas political consultant on Hillary Clinton.
"You stupid, stupid, stupid bastard. My God, Bill, how could you risk everything for that?" -- Hillary to Bill on his conduct with interns. Bill and Hillary: The Marriage
"Bill Clinton not only lacks fire in belly, but steel in the spine...He always sends Hillary out to do his dirty Work." -- Arkansas journalist Meredith Oakley during Clinton's 1990 campaign for Governor.
"Hillary is tougher and more disciplined than Bill is. And she's more analytical. Among his faults, he has a tendency not to think of the consequences of the things he says. I think she knows. She's got a a ten-second delay. If something comes to her mind she doesn't think will play right, she cuts it off before anyone knows she's thinking it." -- 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft
"He couldn't get a drunk whore across a bridge." President William Jefferson Clinton on Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Masschusetts.
Hillary won a cookie backoff with First Lady Barbara Bush. Hillary's cookies were baked by a friend's cook.
Marsha Scott, President BJ Clinton's old hippie girlfriend, was hired as the White House Director of Correspondence (at $98,000 a year). Her first act was to fire twenty staffers and watch over a million letters pile up unanswered in a matter of weeks.
"I felt like a piece of trash. I felt dirty, I felt used...When I look back I was so young, so foolish, so trusting. How could he haved messedwith me so cruelly?" -- Presidental Kneepad owner Monica Lewinski after President Clinton wagged his finger on nation TV and denied he had sex with "that woman."
"She is married to a fellow who believes that politics is all about turning enemies in to friends. Her attitude, friends say, is that enemies are enemies for life and should be consigned to the outer darkness, then vaporized." -- columnist Gloria Borger on Bill and Hillary.
"It is as if Bill Clinton looked us directly in the eye, and waggling his finger, said: 'I want you to listen to me. I never discussed clemency for terrorists with that woman, Ms. Clinton. Not a single time; never.' " -- New York Times columnist William Safire.
"Wow. You know, this guy is a total shill for Bill Clinton, and will attack any enemy of Bill Clinton's, no matter what, no matter how transparently flimsy the grounds. I mean, it makes me speechless." -- Morton Kondracke on CNBC's Geraldo Rivera
"Now, I ask this Congress to resist the tobacco lobby , to reaffirm the FDA's authority to protect our children from tobacco and to hold tobacco companies accountable, while protecting tobacco farmers." -- William Jefferson Clinton, U.S. President, State of the Union Address, Jan 19, 1999
"My desire has gotten stronger, to the point where I want to continue. Continue to fight and get involved with my people, because I love them," -- Adolfo Matos, one of the Terrorists released from Jail by President Billy Jeff Clinton
"The Clinton people have gutted environment enforcement." -- Gregory Sasse, a federal prosecutor with 13 years of experince pursuing polluters, Boston Globe, 11/6/99, Page 1
"Today President Clinton has called on professional sports teams and franchises to do more to help disadvantaged youth. And he also called on the Laker Girls and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to do more to help lonely presidents who are stuck in a loveless marriage." -- Jay Leno, The Tonight Show, NBC.
"Hillary's choice was not to know what she knew." -- Hillary's Choice by Gail Sheehy
"Dear Pinocchio President, the president who has been convicted by the courts for lying, tell me one thing that I've said about you on television that isn't true... And let me remind you, sir, that when your spokesmen said you had not read my book, you had to backtrack on that because you and I went through it together over the phone. Let me remind you that when McCurry said that my book was inaccurate, you had to backtrack on that because you couldn't find a single inaccuracy in the book." -- Dick Morris
"And let me remind you that you under oath said that my testimony about the Monica Lewinsky conversations you and I had was accurate." -- Dick Morris
"I would be happy to give him [Clinton] a blow job [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs." -- Time contributor and former reporter Nina Burleigh recalling what she told the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz about her feeling toward Bill Clinton, as recounted by Burleigh in the July 20, 1998 New York Observer.
"Hillary Clinton in an apron is like Michael Dukakis in a tank." --Political consultant Roger Ailes during the 1992 campaign
"More recently, Clintonite James Carville announced plans to raise money for a publicity campaign aimed at assailing Starr as a 'partisan political hack Republican' with a personnal vendetta against the president." --From the Feb 1997 issue of George magazine
"Al Gore, of all people, saying, 'This is the centerpiece of my campaign,' that'd be like Bill Clinton giving sexual harassment seminars," Rep. Lindsey Graham on Al Gore's plan to make campaign finance reform a centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency. Source Fox News Sunday
"It takes a child to raze a village."
"He was a "fed" showing he had more firepower than anyone else in that little Miami household and, for that reason, they damned well better turn over the kid." -- Chris Matthews on the Clinton/Gore Miami raid.
"And none of us really wants our President, Bill Clinton, to change even one iota. No one wants to see him toiling monastically on his memoirs or with a wrench in his hand, building low-cost housing for Habitat for Humanity. We expect and desire him, once he's thrown off the trammels of the presidency, to become the great Casanova (at least the great Bubbanova) of the Western world (at least the West Coast), noshing on marzipan as he steeps with a bevy of hot-tub hootchies in his Malibu compound." -- Time essay by novelist Mark Leyner, June 5 issue.
"Bill and Hillary possess that rare blend of grade A Machiavellian caginess combined with the luck of a two-time Powerball winner" -- Dennis Miller
Doesn't anybody find it ironic that the Democrats are concerned about the health of Republican vice presidential candidate Richard B. Cheney, who didn't hesitate making his medical history known to the world, yet for eight years they haven't given second thought to the fact that President Clinton, whose health is far more important as commander in chief, has flat-out refused to make public his personal medical records?
Bill Clinton, one wag has observed, was the car salesman on the floor when the billionaire came in and bought a fleet of Caddies. He didn't make the car; he didn't make the money that bought the car. He wrote up the order and went out to dinner.
In 1994, the Democratic controlled Congress passed and President Willy J. Clinton signed a "Crime Control" bill. Among other things, the bill granted to plaintiffs in quid pro quo sexual harrassment suits, the power to ask the defendant about prior sexual relations in ordet to prove "pattern and practice." This new legal power is significant is two ways. First, it is a reversal of 200 years of American jurisprudence. That is, instead of a plaintiff having to prove that the defendant committed a certain act on a certain date, the plaintiff could persuade a jury that the defendant had a "pattern and practice" of the alleged behavior. Historically, such evidence would not have been allowed because it is "prejudicial" (making the jury hate the defendant) and not "probative" (does not prove the allegation that the defendant committed the alleged act. Second, the law ended the concept of "personal life" as we had come to know it.

When Paula Jones brought her suit, it proceeded under this rule. When Clinton obstructed the court from learning the truth about his relationships, he wasdefending his "personal life" from the very same invasive law that he created.


"[Bill Clinton] apparently had extramarital relations with an employee half his age and did so in the workplace, in the vicinity of the Oval Office. Such behavior is not just 'inappropriate' it is immoral. And it is harmful, for it sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family, particularly to our children." -- Senator Lieberman (D-Conn) Al Gore's pick for Vice-President.
"[Bill Clinton] intentional and premeditated decision" to deceive the American public for more than six months,"contradicted the values he has publicly embraced over the last six years" and "compromised his moral authority." -- Senator Lieberman (D-Conn) Al Gore's pick for Vice-President.
"According to a new poll, 67% of men would love to have Hillary Clinton as a wife. Well, sure, look what you could get away with." -- Jay Leno
"Overall, [B.J.] Clinton's been good to the [Republican] Party. We've taken the House. We've taken the Senate. We picked up governorships. Picked up [400 or 500] state legislators." -- Former Republican Senator Bob Dole
"It's as if the Clintons ration truth on a need-to-know basis. Only when the president and the first lady need you to know something for their political benefit does the full story emerge. And when the Clinton line changes, loyal Democrats are expected to obediently forget that the first family ever claimed otherwise." -- USA Today political columnist Walter Shapiro
"Clinton began with what had become his rote reply ­ that the rumors [about Gennifer Flowers] were fictions made up by the Republican opposition in his last gubernatorial campaign." ­ Newsweek's book Quest for the Presidency 1992, page 45.
"All I've been asked about by the press are a woman I didn't sleep with and a draft I didn't dodge." ­ February 12, 1992 Nightline. Clinton later admitted to a sexual relationship with Gennifer Flowers and that he received a draft notice in 1969 but returned to England.
"I've talked to my client for hours, and he doesn't even know this woman. He absolutely denies this happened." ­ Clinton lawyer William Bennett to Paula Jones lawyer Gilbert Davis in May 1994 as reported in Uncovering Clinton by Michael Isikoff, page 90. Clinton settled with Jones in 1998 for $850,000, rather than go to court.
The middle-class tax cut that the Clinton-Gore campaign promised in 1992 magically evolved into an increase in the federal gasoline tax and a massive increase in the top marginal tax rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent
"I think [Clinton] deserves a lot of credit for deficit reduction. Every time he appoints someone to a high federal job, the person pays five years' worth of Social Security taxes on his or her housekeeper, and the deficit goes down." -- a 'retired hog trainer from Phoenix' as quoted in Donald Kaul's column Liberal Viewpoint
"I could sink the Clintons' Whitewater story faster than they can lie about it," McDougal told an Arkansas Republican in 1992, adding "if I could get in a position where I wouldn't get my head beaten off."

Though McDougal's remarks were captured on tape, the mainstream press never reported the comment. Six years later McDougal died of cardiac arrest while in federal custody.

His jailers had taken away his heart medication.


"My biggest concern in the 107th Congress is that Bill Clinton will be with my wife in the Senate spouses' club." -- Sen. Gordon H. Smith, Oregon Republican.
"Anyway, here's how I think it's going to play out in November and beyond. Hillary wins the Senate seat in New York. Now, you would think she wants Gore to be the next President, but she actually needs Bush to win. Then the Clinton machine starts a back-channel campaign attacking Bush for the next four years. Bush is such a massive nitwit that he won't seal the deal for reelection in 2004, so Hillary runs against Dopey and becomes the great white female hope. Then we begin to think, if we can elect the son of a President, why the hell not the wife of a president? Next thing you know, Bill's back cruising trim in the West Wing without any of that bullshit running-the-country-thing to get in the way, plus, this now gives the Clintons eight years to get the 22nd Amendment repealed and get themselves sworn in as the fucking King and Queen of America... Hey, just you watch." -- Dennis Miller
"The independent counsel concludes that Mrs. Clinton's sworn testimony that she had no input into [presidential aide David] Watkins' decision or role in the travel-office firings is factually inaccurate." -- Independent Counsel Robert Ray's official assessment of the credibility of Hillary Rodham Clinton's testimony under oath.
"I do not think this was a coincidence. I do not think our number just came up." -- Juanita Broaddrick, a nursing-home owner who claimed that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978, commenting on the IRS audits befalling her and two other women, who also say Mr. Clinton made sexual advances toward them.
"I think historians will look at Bill Clinton with puzzlement and make the following judgment: that it was a great waste." -- Sen. John McCain's prediction of the historical assessment of the Clinton presidency, as told to Esquire magazine.
"[Bill Clinton] proved himself to be perhaps the most resilient and brazen politician since Nero." -- Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal, Monday, January 8, 2001
"Perjury. Impeachment. Adultery. Harassment. Property scams. Estrangement. Staff firings. Creative word definitions. Who can doubt that Bill Clinton has been our nation's greatest president?" -- Chris Harris, gag writer for David Letterman
"Listening to Bill Clinton is like eating cotton candy. it's sweet going down but it's only air." -- democrat speech writer
Insurance magnate Walter Kaye, who helped Monica Lewinsky get a White House job, gave the Clintons $9,683 in gifts ;including a humidor. (That's a cigar holder, folks.) -- The Washington Times, January 23, 2001
"I tried to walk a line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal and that certain of my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false." -- Ex-President BJ Clinton
Not exactly "The buck stops here," is it?
"Dramatic personality with no outstanding achievements...no significant achievements." -- Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger describing the legacy of former President Clinton.
"Bill Clinton's last-minute pardon of Marc Rich, the shadowy commodities trader who fled to Switzerland in 1983 to avoid American justice, was a shocking abuse of presidential power and a reminder of why George W. Bush's vow to restore integrity to the Oval Office resonates with millions of Americans who otherwise disagree with the new president's politics," -- The New York Times, 1/24/01
The Washington Post on seeing the nearly $200,000 in donated china, furniture and gifts the Clintons hauled out of the White House: "The list demonstrates again the Clintons' defining characteristic: They have no capacity for embarrassment. Words like shabby and tawdry come to mind. They don't begin to do it justice."
"We are particularly troubled by the numerous instances in which Mr. Clinton granted pardons or commutations without proper consultation with federal prosecutors, often to reward friends or political allies or gain future political advantage." - The New York Times, Jan. 2001 "Leave it to Bill Clinton to close out his presidency with one last helping of his signature dish: a pungent stew of campaign contributions, ethical shortcuts and what-the-hell disregard for likely consequences." -- Newsday
"It's a pie in the face of anyone who ever defended you. You may look bad, Bill, but we look just plain stupid." -- Richard Cohen to Bill Clinton on the Marc Rich pardon, published in the Washington Post
"Bill Clinton spent Wednesday golfing at a Florida country club that has no black members and that has also been accused of discriminating against Jews, the New York Post reports. Earlier, Gov. Jeb Bush canceled a planned visit to the club after being informed of its restrictive policies." -- Wall Street Journal 2/10/2001
"I believe in the Clinton Standard of adherence to the nation's campaign finance and bribery laws, enunciated by the president on March 7, 1997: "I don't believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I had changed government policy solely because of a contribution." I note with approval the use of the word "evidence" and also the use of the word "solely." I believe that it is proper to change government policy to address the concerns of people who have given the president money, as long as nobody can find evidence of this being the sole reason."
The [Clinton] library is "a permanent slush fund to support Bill Clinton" -- Former Clinton adviser Dick Morris
"I love liberals. They put up with this guy through perjury, suborning perjury, obstruction of justice, use of the military to cloud discussion of his problems. He steals the toaster and they say,"that's it, we've had it."Is my memory deceiving me or did we in 1992 hear the Clintons say "what we're going to do is get over the moral squalor of the decade of greed, the Reagan decade of greed."I don't think we made it." --George Will, ABC's This Week, Feb. 2001
"Well Clinton really stunk up the joint didn't he? I mean Eric Holder's a friend of mine and he's a decent man and an honorable public servant. But like so many other people who have come close to Bill Clinton, he has been caught up in the trail of slime that Clinton has left behind him like a slug making its way through a garden..." -- Time Magazine national correspondent Jack White
President Clinton deployed military forces 40 times, compared with 14 times under President G.H.W. Bush and 16 times under President Reagan.
"I can't say these are illegitimate questions being brought up because they are legitimate," - Long time Clinton supporter James Carville on the last minute pardons given by ex-President William Jefferson Clinton, New York Times, Friday, 2/23/2001
"Congressional Democrats have a message for former President Clinton: Drop dead for at least the next six months," -- Wall Street Journal Liberal columnist Al Hunt Feb. 2001
"[Bill Clinton] is so thoroughly corrupt, it's frightening." -- New York Times columnist Bob Herbert
"Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party." -- New York Times columnist Bob Herbert
"The night of one of those Gore-Bush TV debates, where did Bill [Clinton] watch it? At Denise's." -- New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams, writing about Pardongate figure Denise Rich
"Former Democratic National Committee finance chairwoman Beth Dozoretz promised no quick resolution to the [Clinton pardon of Marc Rick] when she immediately made it clear that she would exercise her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and not answer any of the House Government Reform Committee's questions." -- Fox News
"I experimented with marijuana a time or two. And I didn't like it, and didn't inhale, and never tried it again." -- William Jefferson Clinton, New York Times, March 31, 1992
"I am going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." -- Billy Jeff Clinton, Television interview, January 26, 1998
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement." --B.J. Clinton Grand jury testimony, August 17, 1998
[Senator] Hillary [Clinton] attacked President Bush for deciding to fire three of New York's four U.S. attorneys. (Mary Jo White, who is investigating Pardongate and handling other high-profile prosecutions, will stay.) Talk about chutzpah--as a Post editorial points out, eight years ago Janet Reno fired every single U.S. attorney in the country immediately after taking office. By way of explanation, Reno said: "It goes with the territory." -- Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web" March 19, 2001
"[Bill & Hillary Clinton] are the most sociopathic, destructive people who have ever set foot in the White House. We will look back on these eight years as the most corrupt and debilitating abuse of power in the history of the presidency." -- actor James Woods
"In the 1990s, the culture became a tool of coercion. Using affirmative action, discriminatory taxation, hate-crime laws, bribes to states and localities, selective investigations, military adventures, and armed federal cops, the Clinton administration was doing far more than interfering in the economy. It was attempting to reconstruct American life." -- late Libertarian economist Murray N. Rothbard
"Poor blacks and black businesses are being pushed out of Harlem in favor of elite whites. Bill Clinton is a perfect symbol of the reality of the white takeover. He is opening the floodgates now for complete gentrification of Harlem." -- Black Panther Party spokesman Malik Zulu Shabazz, April 2001
"It's more dangerous to be a friend of Bill Clinton's than it is to be an abortionist." -- Ann Coulter
Historians have dubbed the Clinton administration: "Sex between the Bushes."
"President Clinton has prospered politically because he is like a parent who allows a child to eat his dessert instead of his vegetables to keep the child happy. "Seeking such short-term approval leads to nutritional deficiency." -- Cal Thomas, America's most widely syndicated columnist.
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