Hillary And Bill: The Bonnie And Clyde Of Politics
By Stephen Fleischman
ARedInTheHouse.com
“We rob banks!” said Clyde Barrow.
“We rob you of your political initiative…” Hillary Clinton might have said when she and her husband, the President of the United States, managed to kill the chances for Universal Health Care for all Americans by, deliberately or otherwise, playing into the hands of the Insurance Industry and their HMO backers. They set the movement for a single payer plan back a generation.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is now the Democratic front-runner in the race for the Presidency of the United States in 2008. We are currently in that murky, foggy area where the runners are cantering before they break out in the open field gallop to the finish line.
Bill Clinton may not have robbed banks, but he robbed gay and lesbian citizens of their civil rights with his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for the armed forces:
"Sexual orientation will not be a bar to service unless manifested by homosexual conduct…., or a marriage or attempted marriage to someone of the same gender." - quoted in "The Pentagon's New Policy Guidelines on Homosexuals in the Military.”
The policy has continued under the Bush Administration, unofficially, stretched to include gays and lesbians in the general population when it ran up against issues of gay marriage.
Before the end of his second term, Clinton was fighting impeachment in the House and the threat of being ousted by the Senate charged with perjury-lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. His Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was urging him to wag the dog. That bit of advice came in handy. How else do you rob your constituents of their political initiative? Start a war. We know from historical experience that it works every time.
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http://www.wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=8772&Itemid=2Stephen Fleischman, television writer-director-producer, spent thirty years in Network News at CBS and ABC, starting in 1953. In 1959, he participated in the formation of the renowned Murrow-Friendly "CBS Reports" series. In 1983, Fleischman won the prestigious Columbia University-Dupont Television Journalism Award. In 2004, he wrote his memoir, “A Red in the House.” For additional information, see: www.ARedintheHouse.com or www.SEFleischman.com.