Thought you all might be interested in a little bit of history from the 1992 campaign, the last one with a large number of Democratic candidates.Attacks by Democrats on other Democrats running for president are hardly new, and they were perhaps even more vicious in 1992, with "cute and cuddly" candidates like Paul Tsongas getting in on the act. (Tsongas called Bill Clinton a name!) Clinton, of course, threw some elbows, too. From Time Magazine on January 27, 1992, select excerpts:From now on, most of Clinton's opponents can be expected to take dead aim at him, rather than scatter their fire against one another. And as he comes under close scrutiny for the first time outside Arkansas, Clinton may well be vulnerable on a variety of issues. One of them is his penchant for offering what sounds like detailed programs that on examination sometimes turn out to be distressingly vague.
Nebraska Senator Robert Kerrey has already assailed the imprecision of Clinton's stand on health care, which is emerging as one of the hottest issues of the campaign. (....)
Then there are the rumors about womanizing that have dogged Clinton for years and resurfaced in sensationalist tabloids last week. Clinton called the stories "lies" but, asked point-blank by a New Hampshire television interviewer last week, "Have you ever committed adultery?" he replied, "If I had, I wouldn't tell you." He admits that his 16-year marriage has gone through some troubled times but says it is now solid. Friends, and even some foes, note that no one has ever been able to pin down anything. (....)
Such performances lead
opponents to call Clinton "Slick Willie." (....)
Furthermore, the Governor has implemented a welfare-reform plan, requiring able-bodied recipients to undergo training or schooling, and imposing penalties if they do not. So far, the results are inconclusive, but
critics say the plan has been sabotaged by the state's sluggish welfare bureaucracy.
If true, that would point up
what many critics, and some friends, consider Clinton's greatest executive weakness: he is a poor manager who conceives good programs but does not see that they are carried out.
A lawsuit filed against the state and Clinton personally last July charges that the Arkansas child-welfare system is riddled with abuse and neglect; children placed in foster care have been mistreated, and some have even died. The problems have been festering for at least a decade, but Clinton paid scant attention. (....)
Liberals contend that Clinton inherited a regressive tax structure (it presses harder on the poor than on the well-off)
and made it more regressive by raising sales taxes while largely leaving alone income and business levies. Clinton replies, correctly, that the state constitution requires a nearly unobtainable 75% vote of the legislature to raise any tax other than the sales levy and, more dubiously, that he sought to change that and failed (
critics say he did not make anywhere near the effort required). (....)
Clinton says he could provide health insurance to all Americans solely through strict cost controls.
Experts think this would require a harsh rationing of medical services.
Says Robert Berne, professor of public administration at New York University: "If someone could do what he says, they would have done it a long time ago."And don't forget Tsongas's "Pander Bear" smear against Clinton. That name calling stuck, second only to "Slick Willie." Anyone got some more quotes from 1992?
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