Not a Day of Rest for HRC.
Hillary joined with her husband to "welcome" President Bush and the Republicans flocking to New York City. While the former president spoke at a black church and made other public appearances to blast his successor, Hill made the rounds of the Sunday morning chat shows, talking with Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press," George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week" and Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
When Hillary appeared on "This Week," she was greeted fawningly by former Clinton staffer Stephanopoulos. When she thanked her host for having her on, Stephanopoulos responded, "Well, actually, thank you for having us in your town." But then he confronted Hillary with a New York Times survey of the 9/11 families, which found that more of them blamed President Clinton for the terrorist attacks than President Bush. Of course, Mrs. Clinton avoided the topic entirely, instead focusing on the 9/11 Commission's findings that of ten missed opportunities, six of them happened in the first eight months of the Bush Administration, and that "the only exemplary action that they could point to with respect to our government coming together to deal with the threat of terrorism took place around the millennium, when the Clinton Administration really had all hands on deck."
Hillary then went on to call President Bush a "bait and switch" politician, and with the prodding of Stephanopoulos, accused the GOP of purposely putting moderates in the convention during prime-time to mislead Americans. Said Hill: "The governor from Texas said, you know, I want to be a uniter, and he's run one of the most divisive administrations in our country's history. He said he was going to be compassionate and conservative, he's been neither. I think, though, the reality show that we've lived the last three and a half years is going to trump any effort to try to divert and deflect attention from the true agenda of this administration."
Stephanopoulos also showed Hillary a recent poll which showed that Hillary is the most disliked Democrat among Republicans, beating out such liberals as Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, and even John Kerry. All she had to say was that the poll's results are a "perverse form of flattery."
NBC's Russert noted how Hillary was a former Goldwater girl who was at the 1968 Republican convention in Atlanta, and the former right-winger reminisced how she spent the summer as an intern for the House Republican Conference Committee, headed at that time by Gerald Ford. She recalled that she "had an incredible experience," but within a year she had "seen the light" and become a liberal Democrat.
When the topic moved to the Swift Boat ads which are criticizing John Kerry, Hillary said she would agree to pull all 527 ads down on both sides, without noting how the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law would shut down independent expenditures by these outside groups anyway on September 3, 60 days before the election, just a few short days after her interview.
When Russert brought up Denny Hastert's new book, in which the Speaker of the House takes Hillary to task for leading an "unseemly scramble" for money for New York after the 9/11 attacks, Hillary simply replied, "That's so sad. . . we did our part and I'm grateful that we were successful in getting the resources that New York needed and deserved."
Hillary also said that there would not have even been a vote on going to war with Iraq if the Senate had known the "true" intelligence regarding WMD's in Iraq, even though John Kerry said he would vote again today for war, even if Iraq didn't have such weapons.
Then, when Russert asked her whether she thought Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should resign, she said, "I'm hoping the entire administration's fired on November 2."
Tacky Play.
A top campaign aide to New York Governor and potential 2006 challenger to Hillary George Pataki has publicly disassociated himself from a new play that portrays Sen. Clinton as a "demonic power-hungry lesbian." The aide, Pataki campaign finance director Patrick Donahue, was not only financially backing the show but also was listed in its literature as producer and co-writer. The show, titled "John F. Kerry: He's No J.F.K.," skewers a number of prominent Democrats, but it's mostly Mrs. Clinton who receives the worst treatment. In one scene, the actress portraying Hillary is seen cuddling with someone playing ABC newswoman Diane Sawyer, and says "Just have one more drink with me, I'll make it worth your while."
