Some (much?) of this is fevered well past where I would go (ie, the stuff on Ford, Reagan, Carter, Obama) however, it's most useful for its collection of some of the sordid history of the Clintons. St Clair is the only one I've seen (doubtless there are others) who has hinted if not made the case that the Clintons purposefully worked to ensure a Republican congress in 1994, 1996 (2000?)so as to be able to resist pressure to enact a progressive agenda.
He also leaves out Clinton's responsibility for WTC 93 and Oklahoma City both of which involved the FBI and perhaps (doubtless!) other government agencies.
St Clair mentions the bombing of Serbia. Has someone done more on Clinton & GW Bush (and GHW Bush?) and the KLA? If it were only GW Bush I could understand the connection to criminal enterprises. But why would three administrations ally themselves against the KLA, especially as GHW Bush had strong connections with the Serbs, their enemies? Nor do I understand why GHW Bush and Clinton allowed the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Many will recall that when Clinton needed to be reelected in 1996, he finally put a stop to it very quickly.
Ronald
PS. St Clair also misses the point I've made elsewhere that Hillary's "mishandling" of the health care initiative was a deliberate and sophisticated operation intended to ensure that no universal single payer option would be allowed.
Ronald
March 24, 2008
Hillary's Berserker Campaign ... for 2012
Blonde Ambition
WWW.Counterpunch.org
http://counterpunch.org/stclair03242008.html
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Hillary Clinton can not win the Democratic nomination for president. The numbers tell the story. Even with robust victories in Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky, Hillary will trail Obama in popular votes and pledged delegates as they enter the convention hall in Denver.
Any other candidate would have been shamed into dropping out long ago. But these are the Clintons and they have no shame.
So why does Hillary persist? Because she hasn't abandoned her aspiration for the White House. Not in 2008, but for 2012. Here's the perverse logic at work.
If Obama defeats McCain in November, it will take an act of treachery beyond anything even the Clintons have ever conjured from their grimoire of political demonology for Hillary to challenge him in 2012. She will be 69 in 2016, almost ready to move into one of the Beverly Nursing Homes, owned by a company she once represented as a corporate lawyer, aggressively protecting the bottom line against such extravagances as healthy meals, clean sheets and proper medical care for the elderly.
Hillary Clinton is the prisoner of an unimpeachable mathematics. So she makes the most of a remorseless situation by doing what the Clintons do best: commit political fratricide. Quite literally, in this case, by knocking off a brother.
In order to realize her vaulting ambition, Hillary must mortally wound Obama as candidate in the fall race against John McCain so that she can run against McCain in 2012.
McCain is at best a one term president. The signs of this are as clear as the scar jagging down his face. McCain, whose resemblance to Lon Chaney becomes eerier by the day, is already an old man, older than Reagan when he was first elected. He is plagued by a cancer he refuses to speak about, a war he refuses to end and an economy that is collapsing beyond the point of recovery. Add to this prospectus, the fact that McCain is prone to the most self-destructive impulses of any American politician since Aaron Burr. His political fate will be sealed before he even swears his oath.
Thus Hillary's berserker strategy against Obama. (For more on "berserkerism" see the SF novels of Fred Saberhagen.)
Down in Mark Penn's dark computer lab, the data culled from pulse polls and focus groups probing the hidden prejudices in the psyche of white America are being packed like shrapnel into political landmines set for Obama: he's unpatriotic, he's un-Christian, he's a Palestinian symp and, yes, he's black. That's three strikes and one head shot.
Exploitation of racial panic is second nature to the power couple Ishmael Reed calls Ma and Pa Clinton. Bill Clinton launched his 1992 campaign by personally overseeing the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a brain-damaged young black man. He wagged his finger at the rapper Sister Souljah, denouncing her music and political opinions as a danger to young minds. The Clintons pilloried their one-time friend Lani Guinier, for her legal writings on the status of blacks and women and booted Dr. Jocelyn Elders from her position as Surgeon General for her refreshingly candid statements about the utility of condoms and masturbation for sexually active youths.
And that's how they treated people they knew. At a structural level, the Clintons' economic and social agenda, incubated at the conservative Democratic Leadership Council, struck directly at poorest precincts of America, targeting blacks and Hispanics with a fervor not seen since Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips crafted the infamous Southern Strategy for Richard Nixon. Hence, the dismantling of welfare, harsh federal crime bills, the refusal to intervene against racial profiling or redress the grievous injustices caused by the racially-motivated sentences handed out for crack cocaine.
The fallout from Ms. Clinton's racially-tinged blitz against Obama will spread far and wide across her party like the toxic particles from a nuclear blast. They've done it all before. The Clintons' reckless first two years in the White House, from the heavy-handed Travel Office fiasco to the fires of Waco and HRC's sophomoric bungling of the health care reform, spurred the GOP takeover of congress in 1994, which they used to their political profit. Then in 1996, Clinton refused to allocate DNC money to tight senate and congressional races, a miserly tactic that allowed the faltering Republicans to retain control of both houses of Congress. It was a cynical decision that many high-ranking Democrats believe constituted a deliberate sabotage of the party's prospects, designed to secure a monopoly-like control of the party apparatus for the Clintons, turning the DNC into their own private PAC.
That's the logic of triangulation. The daisy-cutter tactics of Hillary's current campaign might be called pre-emptive triangulation. The Clintons enrich themselves politically by looting the ruins of their own party.
Look how swiftly her campaign knee-capped her friend Bill Richardson. After working sedulously for Richardson's endorsement only to lose out to Obama, Mark Penn dismissed the governor as "irrelevant." On Good Friday, Clinton intimate James Carville denounced Richardson as "a Judas."
Clinton believes she must destroy the party in order to save it-for herself. But her campaign geared at women and white working class voters relies on a perversion of the past. The recent past at that, as if they believe that the American electorate is blinking out from a kind of political Alzheimer's, where the short-term goes first. Perhaps that's why Penn and his pack of geeks geared their themes to appeal to geezers and grandparents. Clintontime is recast as a glittering epoch of peace and prosperity. Yet this was a decade when Iraq was bombed every three days and a half-million people died under the cruel sanctions regime, when cruise missiles were launched on Sudan and Afghanistan to divert popular attention from blow-jobs and thong-snapping interns, when an illegal air war was orchestrated against Serbia, racking up thousands of civilian casualties and the ongoing bloodbath against peasants in South America known as Plan Colombia, the drug war that keeps on killing.
The Clinton 90s was a time when the economic chasm in America between the rich and everyone else deepened and widened profoundly, under the command of Alan Greenspan and Wall Street maestro Robert Rubin, and the social safety nets protecting the most vulnerable among us where shorn in the name of political pragmatism. The Clintons evoke a nostalgia for a time that never was. If you require objective confirmation of the economic enervation unleashed by the Clinton program consult Contours of Descent, economist Robert Pollin's brilliant dissection of that dismal era.
This coarse reality is transparent to those who lived through it and still suffer the aftershocks of the Clintons' neoliberal program. That's one reason why almost the only blacks to back HRC are encrusted members of Congressional Black Caucus and corporate shills like Andrew Young, who whitewashed Nike's crimes against workers in its Asian sweat-factories. Both camps are old hands at palming political gratuities and walking around money.
Meanwhile, Obama plays the role of willing victim like he spent years studying Italian frescos on the torments of St. Sebastian. He exudes a sense of entitlement nearly as all-engrossing as the Clintons and compounds this with a martydom complex that dramatizes the wounding of each slingshot and arrow lobbed his way.
Although it's not strictly attuned to her peculiar pathology, Hillary could almost call it quits right now, even before she claims Pennsylvania as a scalp. She has fatally toxified Obama and almost certainly secured the White House for her good friend John McCain.
Hillary is following the Reagan model. In 1976, Ronald Reagan bled Gerald Ford through the long winter and spring months, before bludgeoning him the late primary in Pennsylvania. As told in Adam Clymer's new book, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: the Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right, Reagan finally found a theme to his weird internecine challenge in the Panama Canal Treaty. Reagan fell short in the end, but he had hobbled Ford, who stumbled and fell against Carter in the fall election. Carter inherited a stagnant economy, soaring oil prices and a simmering crisis in the Middle East. Reagan easily unseated Carter in the 1980 election. The Clintons are shrewd enough to detect the striking historical parallels here and craven enough to exploit them for their own long-term advantage.
The Clinton war room may still throb to the beats of Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow." But late at night, when Mandy Grunwald has slipped on her flannels and Mark Penn has powered-down his Cray super-computer, Hillary and Bill will surely toast their strange time-delayed victory to the chords of McCartney's "Live and Let Die."
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, will be published this spring. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.
Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts
Friday, March 28, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Robert Parry: Did Hillary Clinton fabricate her role in the S-Chip Program?
consortiumnews.com
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2008/031608b.html
Clinton's Child-Health Hype
By Robert Parry
March 17, 2008
A centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s case for her candidacy – that she rebounded from the disaster of her health-care plan in 1994 to help enact a popular state-by-state program for children’s health insurance three years later – looks to be largely a fabrication.
At most, Clinton appears to have been a quiet supporter within her husband’s White House for the so-called S-CHIP program, which was fashioned through bipartisan compromise in the U.S. Senate against initial Clinton administration opposition.
Nevertheless, in debates and speeches over the past several months, Clinton has presented her S-CHIP role as proof of her key argument that the way to achieve progress in Washington is through hard work and determination.
“You know, when I wasn’t successful about getting universal health care, I didn’t give up,” Clinton said during the Feb. 26 debate in Ohio. “I just got to work and helped to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And, you know, today in Ohio 140,000 kids have health insurance.”
In speeches, Clinton alters her references to the S-CHIP program to cite the number of children covered in whatever state she’s in. Her story often receives warm applause and the nodding of heads. Sometimes, mothers of sick children are brought to Clinton’s campaign appearances to thank her.
However, according to people familiar with the history of the S-CHIP program, Clinton’s account is essentially false or – at least – a gross exaggeration.
In her memoir, Living History, the S-CHIP law merited only a brief reference at the end of a long paragraph in which she asserts, “I worked behind the scenes with Senator [Ted] Kennedy to help create the Children’s Health Insurance Program.”
However, according to a Boston Globe examination of the program’s history, Clinton “had little to do with crafting the landmark legislation or ushering it through Congress.” The Globe article by Susan Milligan quoted key participants in the law’s passage as having little or no recollection of any legislative role by the then-First Lady.
“The [Clinton] White House wasn’t for it,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who worked with Sen. Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, to write the law and to win passage. “We really had to rough them [President Bill Clinton and his advisers] up. … She may have done some advocacy [privately] over at the White House. But I’m not aware of it.”
President Clinton fought the original S-CHIP plan in 1997 because he feared it might disrupt a budget deal he was crafting with Republican leaders who then controlled Congress. However, Kennedy – recruiting Hatch and other Republicans – managed to forge a bipartisan consensus behind the bill, which passed later that year.
Asked by the Globe about Hillary Clinton’s role, Hatch responded: “Does she deserve credit for S-CHIP? No, Teddy does, but she doesn’t.”
Bay State Plan
The Globe reported that Kennedy patterned the S-CHIP plan after a Massachusetts program that started in 1996. Kennedy met with two Bay State health-care advocates, Dr. Barry Zuckerman of Boston Medical Center and John McDonough, then a Democratic state legislator.
McDonough said Kennedy developed the national S-CHIP concept after that meeting.
“I don’t recall any signs of Mrs. Clinton’s engagement,” said McDonough, who has not endorsed a presidential candidate. “I’m sure she was behind the scenes, engaged in lobbying, but it is demonstrably not the case” that she was a driving force behind the bill.
Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who was then the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that handles health legislation, also had no recollection of Hillary Clinton weighing in.
“I don’t remember the role of the [Clinton] White House,” said Waxman, who is uncommitted on this year’s presidential race. “It [the S-CHIP bill] did not originate at the White House.”
In response to the Globe’s inquiries, Clinton campaign advisers did not spell out what Clinton did to enact the law, but one aide, Chris Jennings, said “at every step of the way, she was always pushing” for expanded healthcare for children.
The Clinton campaign also suggested that politics might be influencing the questions about Clinton’s S-CHIP role, since Sen. Kennedy has endorsed Barack Obama and Sen. Hatch is supporting John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. [Boston Globe, March 14, 2008]
Still, while it’s common for politicians to highlight their roles in passing popular legislation, Sen. Clinton has woven the enactment of S-CHIP as a central thread in her campaign narrative. It explains how she would govern and why voters should embrace her vision that pluck and hard work can conquer all.
In Clinton’s narrative, she picked herself up from her failed health-care plan, learned some lessons, and then pushed through a slimmed-down measure (S-CHIP) that has produced important results for millions of American families.
If that story is essentially false, then she is misleading voters not only on her credentials as a bipartisan crafter of legislation but on her notion that she can bring about change through her burn-the-midnight-oil tenacity.
Barack Obama has offered a competing vision, that his ability to rally public enthusiasm for change – and his distance from the bitter partisanship of the Clinton Years – will let him transcend Washington’s divisions and achieve real progress on domestic priorities.
Though there may be merit to both approaches, neither Democratic candidate has articulated what may be the most important element in overcoming Republican resistance – winning a landslide that carries in large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
However, the likelihood that either Obama or Clinton will have the “coattails” needed to achieve a filibuster-proof Senate or a dominant House majority has faded over the past several weeks with the length and negativity of the Democratic nominating race.
The disclosure that Hillary Clinton hyped her role in passing the S-CHIP law is only going to raise new doubts about the honesty and integrity of the onetime Democratic frontrunner.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2008/031608b.html
Clinton's Child-Health Hype
By Robert Parry
March 17, 2008
A centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s case for her candidacy – that she rebounded from the disaster of her health-care plan in 1994 to help enact a popular state-by-state program for children’s health insurance three years later – looks to be largely a fabrication.
At most, Clinton appears to have been a quiet supporter within her husband’s White House for the so-called S-CHIP program, which was fashioned through bipartisan compromise in the U.S. Senate against initial Clinton administration opposition.
Nevertheless, in debates and speeches over the past several months, Clinton has presented her S-CHIP role as proof of her key argument that the way to achieve progress in Washington is through hard work and determination.
“You know, when I wasn’t successful about getting universal health care, I didn’t give up,” Clinton said during the Feb. 26 debate in Ohio. “I just got to work and helped to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And, you know, today in Ohio 140,000 kids have health insurance.”
In speeches, Clinton alters her references to the S-CHIP program to cite the number of children covered in whatever state she’s in. Her story often receives warm applause and the nodding of heads. Sometimes, mothers of sick children are brought to Clinton’s campaign appearances to thank her.
However, according to people familiar with the history of the S-CHIP program, Clinton’s account is essentially false or – at least – a gross exaggeration.
In her memoir, Living History, the S-CHIP law merited only a brief reference at the end of a long paragraph in which she asserts, “I worked behind the scenes with Senator [Ted] Kennedy to help create the Children’s Health Insurance Program.”
However, according to a Boston Globe examination of the program’s history, Clinton “had little to do with crafting the landmark legislation or ushering it through Congress.” The Globe article by Susan Milligan quoted key participants in the law’s passage as having little or no recollection of any legislative role by the then-First Lady.
“The [Clinton] White House wasn’t for it,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who worked with Sen. Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, to write the law and to win passage. “We really had to rough them [President Bill Clinton and his advisers] up. … She may have done some advocacy [privately] over at the White House. But I’m not aware of it.”
President Clinton fought the original S-CHIP plan in 1997 because he feared it might disrupt a budget deal he was crafting with Republican leaders who then controlled Congress. However, Kennedy – recruiting Hatch and other Republicans – managed to forge a bipartisan consensus behind the bill, which passed later that year.
Asked by the Globe about Hillary Clinton’s role, Hatch responded: “Does she deserve credit for S-CHIP? No, Teddy does, but she doesn’t.”
Bay State Plan
The Globe reported that Kennedy patterned the S-CHIP plan after a Massachusetts program that started in 1996. Kennedy met with two Bay State health-care advocates, Dr. Barry Zuckerman of Boston Medical Center and John McDonough, then a Democratic state legislator.
McDonough said Kennedy developed the national S-CHIP concept after that meeting.
“I don’t recall any signs of Mrs. Clinton’s engagement,” said McDonough, who has not endorsed a presidential candidate. “I’m sure she was behind the scenes, engaged in lobbying, but it is demonstrably not the case” that she was a driving force behind the bill.
Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who was then the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that handles health legislation, also had no recollection of Hillary Clinton weighing in.
“I don’t remember the role of the [Clinton] White House,” said Waxman, who is uncommitted on this year’s presidential race. “It [the S-CHIP bill] did not originate at the White House.”
In response to the Globe’s inquiries, Clinton campaign advisers did not spell out what Clinton did to enact the law, but one aide, Chris Jennings, said “at every step of the way, she was always pushing” for expanded healthcare for children.
The Clinton campaign also suggested that politics might be influencing the questions about Clinton’s S-CHIP role, since Sen. Kennedy has endorsed Barack Obama and Sen. Hatch is supporting John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. [Boston Globe, March 14, 2008]
Still, while it’s common for politicians to highlight their roles in passing popular legislation, Sen. Clinton has woven the enactment of S-CHIP as a central thread in her campaign narrative. It explains how she would govern and why voters should embrace her vision that pluck and hard work can conquer all.
In Clinton’s narrative, she picked herself up from her failed health-care plan, learned some lessons, and then pushed through a slimmed-down measure (S-CHIP) that has produced important results for millions of American families.
If that story is essentially false, then she is misleading voters not only on her credentials as a bipartisan crafter of legislation but on her notion that she can bring about change through her burn-the-midnight-oil tenacity.
Barack Obama has offered a competing vision, that his ability to rally public enthusiasm for change – and his distance from the bitter partisanship of the Clinton Years – will let him transcend Washington’s divisions and achieve real progress on domestic priorities.
Though there may be merit to both approaches, neither Democratic candidate has articulated what may be the most important element in overcoming Republican resistance – winning a landslide that carries in large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
However, the likelihood that either Obama or Clinton will have the “coattails” needed to achieve a filibuster-proof Senate or a dominant House majority has faded over the past several weeks with the length and negativity of the Democratic nominating race.
The disclosure that Hillary Clinton hyped her role in passing the S-CHIP law is only going to raise new doubts about the honesty and integrity of the onetime Democratic frontrunner.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Kurt Nimmo: Coulter as Stalking Horse for Bilderburgs: She Likes Hillary:
I started this with the idea of showing my differences with the estimable Nimmo, from whom I learned so much, and then I recalled that I'm reading Walter Karp at the moment (indispensable is his Indispensable Enemies) and he says the same thing (or would if he were alive) that McCain is put there to lose to Hillary. Hmmm.
We're facing, as they say, a lot of challenges, but I'm not sure it quite works that way.
Well, this is fun, but duty calls and I'll have to leave it to the dedicated reader. --RB
Coulter: Hillary is “Our Girl”
by Kurt Nimmo
Truth News
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=1867
February 2, 2008
Case closed. You don’t need any more evidence there is little substantive difference between “conservatives” (neocons) and “liberals” (neolibs) than the pronouncements of the Queen of Hateful Shrill, Ann Coulter, the “author” who registers to vote in multiple jurisdictions and gets away with it.
Hillary is “more conservative” than John McCain, the Manchurian candidate who hates “gooks,” mostly because the Bilderberg Queen and selectee of preference by the Rothschilds and the elite is more on track with the neocon and neoliberal plan to kill recalcitrant Muslims, break their countries into manageable pieces along tribal and ethnic lines, and impose IMF and World Bank schemes on them and thus steal their natural resources and reduce them to slave labor gulag inmates à la “communist” China.
Coulter “absolutely” believes Queen Hillary will be “stronger on the war on terrorism,” that is to say not only killing people who have the misfortune of living in “rogue nations,” but decimating what remains of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Obviously, for Coulter and the neocons, who will soon enough throw their support behind Clinton, McCain’s crude forever war pronouncements are not enough. But then, of course, McCain is but window dressing for the stampede to “elect” Hillary, an expensive circus sideshow designed to make the American people think there is a “democratic” process in the United States and that they actually have a say in who will be the next decider-commander. Not explained is why the elite feel compelled to continue this transparent charade. Nostalgia, maybe?
In order to pretend there is a difference of opinion in regard to Hillary Clinton’s impending anointment as president, Sean Hannity tells us Hillary will “nationalize health care” and “pull the troops out of Iraq,” never mind Clinton is an unabashed warmonger who voted to kill a million plus Iraqis and has repeatedly stated her desire to do likewise to grandmothers and toddlers in Iran. Coulter disagrees and actually tells the truth: the positions of Republicans and Democrats, she avers, are “about that far apart,” and she makes the point by showing us a very small space between her thumb and forefinger.
Hannity’s role as straight man to Coulter’s snake oil dance is obvious enough on its face and his supposed protestation is entirely theatrical as his boss, Rupert Murdoch, has hosted Clinton fundraisers in the not too distant past. This “interfaith ménage,” opines Forbes, redraws “America’s political lines” and is nothing if not Bismarckian realpolitik.
Oh, please. It should be obvious by now to an astute grade school student of current events that the whole thing is rigged and choreographed — albeit rather shoddily — and Coulter is nothing if not a well-paid shill who is tasked with promoting whatever candidate our rulers want. Hillary Clinton and her VP, Barack Obama, will rule the roost in politically correct fashion — as brainwashed liberals are locked in the gender and race vice and dare not complain, lest they be expelled from the herd — and the so-called conservatives, actually GWB bumper sticker neocons, will be brought into the fold by the likes of Coulter, the Queen of Mean.
Of course, Hannity and Limbaugh will play the part of the disgruntled opposition, as Clinton hatred smolders fiercely at the root of the base, and they will be paid handsomely for their petty and operatic disagreement, which is less than meaningless, to say the least, but necessary to assuage the hurt feelings of the aforementioned GWB neocon followers.
John McCain will be selected as the Republican nominee for one reason above all others — to drive an appreciable number of “conservatives” into Camp Hillary. McCain, the Manchurian candidate and Keating Five associate, is ugly and unpalatable enough to accomplish this and the neocon flag-waving base is stupid enough to buy into it and remain none the wiser for the next eight years.
We're facing, as they say, a lot of challenges, but I'm not sure it quite works that way.
Well, this is fun, but duty calls and I'll have to leave it to the dedicated reader. --RB
Coulter: Hillary is “Our Girl”
by Kurt Nimmo
Truth News
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=1867
February 2, 2008
Case closed. You don’t need any more evidence there is little substantive difference between “conservatives” (neocons) and “liberals” (neolibs) than the pronouncements of the Queen of Hateful Shrill, Ann Coulter, the “author” who registers to vote in multiple jurisdictions and gets away with it.
Hillary is “more conservative” than John McCain, the Manchurian candidate who hates “gooks,” mostly because the Bilderberg Queen and selectee of preference by the Rothschilds and the elite is more on track with the neocon and neoliberal plan to kill recalcitrant Muslims, break their countries into manageable pieces along tribal and ethnic lines, and impose IMF and World Bank schemes on them and thus steal their natural resources and reduce them to slave labor gulag inmates à la “communist” China.
Coulter “absolutely” believes Queen Hillary will be “stronger on the war on terrorism,” that is to say not only killing people who have the misfortune of living in “rogue nations,” but decimating what remains of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Obviously, for Coulter and the neocons, who will soon enough throw their support behind Clinton, McCain’s crude forever war pronouncements are not enough. But then, of course, McCain is but window dressing for the stampede to “elect” Hillary, an expensive circus sideshow designed to make the American people think there is a “democratic” process in the United States and that they actually have a say in who will be the next decider-commander. Not explained is why the elite feel compelled to continue this transparent charade. Nostalgia, maybe?
In order to pretend there is a difference of opinion in regard to Hillary Clinton’s impending anointment as president, Sean Hannity tells us Hillary will “nationalize health care” and “pull the troops out of Iraq,” never mind Clinton is an unabashed warmonger who voted to kill a million plus Iraqis and has repeatedly stated her desire to do likewise to grandmothers and toddlers in Iran. Coulter disagrees and actually tells the truth: the positions of Republicans and Democrats, she avers, are “about that far apart,” and she makes the point by showing us a very small space between her thumb and forefinger.
Hannity’s role as straight man to Coulter’s snake oil dance is obvious enough on its face and his supposed protestation is entirely theatrical as his boss, Rupert Murdoch, has hosted Clinton fundraisers in the not too distant past. This “interfaith ménage,” opines Forbes, redraws “America’s political lines” and is nothing if not Bismarckian realpolitik.
Oh, please. It should be obvious by now to an astute grade school student of current events that the whole thing is rigged and choreographed — albeit rather shoddily — and Coulter is nothing if not a well-paid shill who is tasked with promoting whatever candidate our rulers want. Hillary Clinton and her VP, Barack Obama, will rule the roost in politically correct fashion — as brainwashed liberals are locked in the gender and race vice and dare not complain, lest they be expelled from the herd — and the so-called conservatives, actually GWB bumper sticker neocons, will be brought into the fold by the likes of Coulter, the Queen of Mean.
Of course, Hannity and Limbaugh will play the part of the disgruntled opposition, as Clinton hatred smolders fiercely at the root of the base, and they will be paid handsomely for their petty and operatic disagreement, which is less than meaningless, to say the least, but necessary to assuage the hurt feelings of the aforementioned GWB neocon followers.
John McCain will be selected as the Republican nominee for one reason above all others — to drive an appreciable number of “conservatives” into Camp Hillary. McCain, the Manchurian candidate and Keating Five associate, is ugly and unpalatable enough to accomplish this and the neocon flag-waving base is stupid enough to buy into it and remain none the wiser for the next eight years.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
MSNBC: Candidates Court Jewish Voters (Oct 2007)
MSNBC.com
Candidates court Jewish support Clinton,
Giuliani attract some early interest
By Matthew E. Berger
NBC/National Journal Campaign Reporter
Oct. 12, 2007
WYNDHAM, N.H. - The John Edwards presidential campaign had a problem. Set to announce the appointment of former Rep. David Bonior as campaign manager in a few days, Edwards' strategists began to realize that the Michigan Democrat's strong support for Palestinians while he was in Congress could hurt Edwards among American Jews. And if Jewish voters started to get nervous about the former senator from North Carolina, a lot of dollars could be at stake. So before the December announcement, Bonior started making calls to influential American Jewish leaders, including some members of Congress, and to political donors, according to people familiar with the effort. Bonior assured the leaders he would not be involved in Middle East policy and said his appointment did not suggest any changes in Edwards's positions on Israel. But many Jewish leaders were still angry that their input was sought only after the decision had been made. The move added Edwards to the list of Democratic presidential candidates whose support for Israel, while strong, has blemishes. Some of the leading White House candidates don't have long congressional voting records with which to assess their support for Israel, so some Jewish voters are using other indicators to gauge them, such as whom the candidates are associating with and how often they talk about Middle East issues when they aren't speaking in front of a catered kosher spread. Clinton, Giuliani gain some early support
Thus far, many Jewish Democrats have rallied behind Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had to overcome doubts fueled by her embrace of the wife of then-Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in 1999. And although former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is beloved by many Jews for his engagement on Israel, many influential Jewish Republicans have not taken sides in what they view as a wide-open GOP race. Jews represent less than 2 percent of the American electorate, but their support is disproportionately important. A higher percentage of Jews vote than the general public and many are active political donors. This time around, they could play an even larger role in both the primary and general elections.
Historically, Jews have lent most of their support to Democrats and to liberal causes. But as more Republicans have embraced Israel and some Jewish voters have turned their focus to fiscal discipline, the GOP has been gaining in the Jewish community in recent years. Some younger and more-religious Jews have also embraced Republican ideals. President Bush garnered about 25 percent of the Jewish vote in 2004, up from 19 percent four years earlier. Jewish support was seen as helpful in winning electoral votes for Republicans in Ohio and Florida. In 2008, their votes could help in the primaries because several states with large Jewish populations -- including California, Florida, and New York -- will vote on or before February 5. That's why Democrats have been actively pursuing Jewish supporters and donors. The Clinton campaign is seen by many Jewish leaders as the most engaged and organized, and a lot of support has already coalesced around her. "The perception is, she's going to win," said a Jewish official who is not aligned with a campaign and spoke on condition of anonymity. "So they, like any other group, want to be with the winning team and want to be there early." But Clinton has baggage. She raised eyebrows throughout the Jewish community in 1999 with her embrace of Suha Arafat moments after the Palestinian made derogatory remarks about Israel.
Clinton said she was listening to the speech -- given in Arabic -- through an English interpreter and did not understand what Arafat was saying. Clinton also has to deal with some Jews' doubts about her husband's Middle East record. Many of them praise Bill Clinton's efforts at the end of his second term to bring Israelis and Palestinians together, but others say that he pressured Israel to offer too much. But advisers in the Jewish community say that Clinton has said and done the right things since being elected to the Senate in 2000, including leader the effort in Congress to have the International Red Cross recognize the Israeli branch, Magen David Adom. "She hugged Arafat's wife, but things have evolved with the Palestinians," a Jewish official said. "And she has built a relationship with the Jewish community in New York that shows how she has evolved." Barack Obama has been trying to take some of that support from Clinton and has made inroads with Jews opposed to the Iraq war. But he has faced questions about aligning himself with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser, who has defended the controversial book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," which contends that pro-Israel activists have undue influence over American foreign affairs. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the umbrella organization for American Jewish groups, said that Brzezinski is a concern to many in the Jewish community because of his positions on Israel. "But the question is what role he plays and what other advisers are involved," Hoenlein said.
The Carter effect
A version of the adviser game hurt Democratic nominee John Kerry in 2004 when he suggested that Carter could serve as a Middle East envoy in his administration. To many Jews, Carter is seen as an apologist for Palestinians; his latest book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," has only heightened that perception. Jewish leaders say that candidates who associate themselves with advisers who are at odds with mainstream Jewish beliefs on the Middle East can have a tough time trying to convince Jewish voters that their personal viewpoints are different. "Especially if a candidate doesn't have a well-crafted position on an issue, or a long-enough track record, then obviously the thing is to see who's advising them," a Jewish official said. "Who are the voices that are attempting to influence them? Who has access to the candidate's ear?" Kerry tried to defuse the criticism by touting his brother, Cam Kerry, who had converted to Judaism and was a campaign adviser. Similarly, Obama and Edwards have surrounded themselves with Jewish community leaders and supporters to offset the concerns that their controversial campaign aides have raised.
Obama advisers have said that concerns about Brzezinski have been overstated, and they stress that he will not be advising Obama on Israeli-Palestinian affairs. "He's not the uber-foreign-policy czar of the campaign," one adviser said. "Any candidate is going to be endorsed by people they don't agree with on other issues." On the Republican side, Giuliani has attracted some early support from Republican Jews. It helps that he ran a city with a large Jewish population and is well known for his strong ties to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He also made headlines for kicking Arafat out of a concert for world leaders in 1995. "The Orthodox community in New York is obviously not the only Orthodox community in the country, but it's the largest," said one Jewish leader, speaking of the more conservative strand of Judaism. "And so far, they are going with what they know, and that's Rudy." But around the country, other Republican Jews say that their brethren are not jumping into the fray.
Although many Republican Jews view Giuliani and Sen. John McCain favorably, they're concerned about their electability. And other top-tier candidates are less well known. "It's disconcerting," said Fred Zeidman, a Republican fundraiser in Houston and the chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, who has been raising money for McCain. "None of us are making serious headway in the Jewish community." Some analysts said that donors may be more likely to give once the candidates discuss their Middle East policies. Positions may become clearer on October 16, when the GOP contenders gather in Washington to address the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Most of the candidates will be addressing an audience interested primarily in the Middle East for the first time, and some campaigns will use the forum to discuss where they stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their views on dealing with Iran. Indeed, Iran has become the new bellwether for the Jewish community. Historically, Jewish voters were most concerned about whether candidates supported Israel. But support for Israel has become almost a universal policy position in Washington. The new test is how tough the candidates will be in combating the nuclear threat that Iran poses to Israel, and whether Israel should be allowed to take pre-emptive action. In the end, analysts said, there are no leading candidates in either party whom Jewish leaders would be very unhappy to have as president. The question is, which one will show the greatest interest in the issues that Jewish voters value most.
The author is covering the presidential campaign as an NBC/National Journal reporter. He can be reached at matthew.berger@nbcuni.com .URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21266470/
Candidates court Jewish support Clinton,
Giuliani attract some early interest
By Matthew E. Berger
NBC/National Journal Campaign Reporter
Oct. 12, 2007
WYNDHAM, N.H. - The John Edwards presidential campaign had a problem. Set to announce the appointment of former Rep. David Bonior as campaign manager in a few days, Edwards' strategists began to realize that the Michigan Democrat's strong support for Palestinians while he was in Congress could hurt Edwards among American Jews. And if Jewish voters started to get nervous about the former senator from North Carolina, a lot of dollars could be at stake. So before the December announcement, Bonior started making calls to influential American Jewish leaders, including some members of Congress, and to political donors, according to people familiar with the effort. Bonior assured the leaders he would not be involved in Middle East policy and said his appointment did not suggest any changes in Edwards's positions on Israel. But many Jewish leaders were still angry that their input was sought only after the decision had been made. The move added Edwards to the list of Democratic presidential candidates whose support for Israel, while strong, has blemishes. Some of the leading White House candidates don't have long congressional voting records with which to assess their support for Israel, so some Jewish voters are using other indicators to gauge them, such as whom the candidates are associating with and how often they talk about Middle East issues when they aren't speaking in front of a catered kosher spread. Clinton, Giuliani gain some early support
Thus far, many Jewish Democrats have rallied behind Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had to overcome doubts fueled by her embrace of the wife of then-Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in 1999. And although former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is beloved by many Jews for his engagement on Israel, many influential Jewish Republicans have not taken sides in what they view as a wide-open GOP race. Jews represent less than 2 percent of the American electorate, but their support is disproportionately important. A higher percentage of Jews vote than the general public and many are active political donors. This time around, they could play an even larger role in both the primary and general elections.
Historically, Jews have lent most of their support to Democrats and to liberal causes. But as more Republicans have embraced Israel and some Jewish voters have turned their focus to fiscal discipline, the GOP has been gaining in the Jewish community in recent years. Some younger and more-religious Jews have also embraced Republican ideals. President Bush garnered about 25 percent of the Jewish vote in 2004, up from 19 percent four years earlier. Jewish support was seen as helpful in winning electoral votes for Republicans in Ohio and Florida. In 2008, their votes could help in the primaries because several states with large Jewish populations -- including California, Florida, and New York -- will vote on or before February 5. That's why Democrats have been actively pursuing Jewish supporters and donors. The Clinton campaign is seen by many Jewish leaders as the most engaged and organized, and a lot of support has already coalesced around her. "The perception is, she's going to win," said a Jewish official who is not aligned with a campaign and spoke on condition of anonymity. "So they, like any other group, want to be with the winning team and want to be there early." But Clinton has baggage. She raised eyebrows throughout the Jewish community in 1999 with her embrace of Suha Arafat moments after the Palestinian made derogatory remarks about Israel.
Clinton said she was listening to the speech -- given in Arabic -- through an English interpreter and did not understand what Arafat was saying. Clinton also has to deal with some Jews' doubts about her husband's Middle East record. Many of them praise Bill Clinton's efforts at the end of his second term to bring Israelis and Palestinians together, but others say that he pressured Israel to offer too much. But advisers in the Jewish community say that Clinton has said and done the right things since being elected to the Senate in 2000, including leader the effort in Congress to have the International Red Cross recognize the Israeli branch, Magen David Adom. "She hugged Arafat's wife, but things have evolved with the Palestinians," a Jewish official said. "And she has built a relationship with the Jewish community in New York that shows how she has evolved." Barack Obama has been trying to take some of that support from Clinton and has made inroads with Jews opposed to the Iraq war. But he has faced questions about aligning himself with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser, who has defended the controversial book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," which contends that pro-Israel activists have undue influence over American foreign affairs. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the umbrella organization for American Jewish groups, said that Brzezinski is a concern to many in the Jewish community because of his positions on Israel. "But the question is what role he plays and what other advisers are involved," Hoenlein said.
The Carter effect
A version of the adviser game hurt Democratic nominee John Kerry in 2004 when he suggested that Carter could serve as a Middle East envoy in his administration. To many Jews, Carter is seen as an apologist for Palestinians; his latest book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," has only heightened that perception. Jewish leaders say that candidates who associate themselves with advisers who are at odds with mainstream Jewish beliefs on the Middle East can have a tough time trying to convince Jewish voters that their personal viewpoints are different. "Especially if a candidate doesn't have a well-crafted position on an issue, or a long-enough track record, then obviously the thing is to see who's advising them," a Jewish official said. "Who are the voices that are attempting to influence them? Who has access to the candidate's ear?" Kerry tried to defuse the criticism by touting his brother, Cam Kerry, who had converted to Judaism and was a campaign adviser. Similarly, Obama and Edwards have surrounded themselves with Jewish community leaders and supporters to offset the concerns that their controversial campaign aides have raised.
Obama advisers have said that concerns about Brzezinski have been overstated, and they stress that he will not be advising Obama on Israeli-Palestinian affairs. "He's not the uber-foreign-policy czar of the campaign," one adviser said. "Any candidate is going to be endorsed by people they don't agree with on other issues." On the Republican side, Giuliani has attracted some early support from Republican Jews. It helps that he ran a city with a large Jewish population and is well known for his strong ties to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He also made headlines for kicking Arafat out of a concert for world leaders in 1995. "The Orthodox community in New York is obviously not the only Orthodox community in the country, but it's the largest," said one Jewish leader, speaking of the more conservative strand of Judaism. "And so far, they are going with what they know, and that's Rudy." But around the country, other Republican Jews say that their brethren are not jumping into the fray.
Although many Republican Jews view Giuliani and Sen. John McCain favorably, they're concerned about their electability. And other top-tier candidates are less well known. "It's disconcerting," said Fred Zeidman, a Republican fundraiser in Houston and the chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, who has been raising money for McCain. "None of us are making serious headway in the Jewish community." Some analysts said that donors may be more likely to give once the candidates discuss their Middle East policies. Positions may become clearer on October 16, when the GOP contenders gather in Washington to address the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Most of the candidates will be addressing an audience interested primarily in the Middle East for the first time, and some campaigns will use the forum to discuss where they stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their views on dealing with Iran. Indeed, Iran has become the new bellwether for the Jewish community. Historically, Jewish voters were most concerned about whether candidates supported Israel. But support for Israel has become almost a universal policy position in Washington. The new test is how tough the candidates will be in combating the nuclear threat that Iran poses to Israel, and whether Israel should be allowed to take pre-emptive action. In the end, analysts said, there are no leading candidates in either party whom Jewish leaders would be very unhappy to have as president. The question is, which one will show the greatest interest in the issues that Jewish voters value most.
The author is covering the presidential campaign as an NBC/National Journal reporter. He can be reached at matthew.berger@nbcuni.com .URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21266470/
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Stephanie N. Mehta: How Haim Saban works with Hillary Clinton
The man with the golden gut
How Haim Saban, a flinty self-made billionaire, plans to turn Univision into the next great network - and put Hillary Clinton in the White House. Fortune's Stephanie Mehta reports.
By Stephanie N. Mehta, Fortune senior writer
May 1 2007: 10:01 AM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- "May I offer you a cucumber?"
That's how Haim Saban begins his account of the battle for Spanish-language media company Univision. It's an unconventional icebreaker, to be sure, but then again, much about the 62-year-old media entrepreneur is out of the ordinary: He gossips with Rupert Murdoch, vacations with Bill Clinton, throws parties with Steven Spielberg, and confers with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
He is worth an estimated $2.8 billion. Yet he eschews power lunches at the Grill in Los Angeles, choosing instead to eat sushi nearly every weekday with his driver, Laine Burton.
The cucumber, it turns out, is part of an afternoon snack that also includes tomatoes and pepper jack cheese. "It's very low fat," says the fitness-conscious Saban. (He works out an hour or more daily.)
"He could be the subject of a movie or a TV series," former President Bill Clinton told Fortune. "He's a fascinating character."
Despite this ready-for-prime-time personality, Saban (sa-BAHN) has preferred to work behind the scenes. But two events are changing his ability to stage-manage far from the headlines. First, he is attempting to put Senator Hillary Clinton in the White House at a time when Senator Barack Obama is catching fire with L.A.'s Gulfstream liberals. Second, he and a consortium of private-equity players bought Univision, the largest Hispanic media company in the U.S., in March.
The $12.3 billion acquisition battle strained Univision's relations with Mexican media giant and rival bidder Grupo Televisa (Charts), its main supplier of programs. The deal, which should have been a snap to close, has been singled out for some harsh regulatory treatment: Before the Federal Communications Commission signed off on it, the buyers had to agree to pay a hefty $24 million fine to settle charges that the network wasn't airing enough children's programming.
Univision claimed it was meeting its educational mandates by running Complices al Rescate (Friends to the Rescue), a telenovela about 11-year-old twin girls who swap identities. Not exactly Plaza Sesamo.
Fortified by his veggies and cheese, Saban explains why Univision and New York's junior Senator will both be winners in 2008. First, Univision: Under founder A. Jerrold Perenchio, the company had grown to nearly $2 billion in annual revenue, but Saban, who put in a chunk of his own money, and his deep-pocketed partners - Providence Equity Partners, TPG, Thomas H. Lee Partners, and Madison Dearborn - think Univision can still grow sales in the double digits. That would be a tall order for ABC, CBS, or NBC, but Saban isn't sweating it, because by the year 2010, the Hispanic population will grow 17% and will be spending about $1.1 trillion a year.
The trouble with Saban's vision is that for now, only a fraction of the top U.S. brands advertise on Univision, partly because some key decision-makers picture its viewers as blue-collar immigrants rather than affluent suburbanites. "Marketing to Hispanics is something that companies need to make a priority," says Caleb Windover, managing director of ad buyer MediaVest's multicultural division. Before Madison Avenue will open the spigot, Univision needs a face to woo its media buyers.
That job falls to new CEO Joe Uva, who most recently ran ad-buying agency OMD. Like his predecessor, Perenchio, Uva doesn't speak Spanish, but he will go out and personally press the flesh with marketers and suppliers. The 76-year-old Perenchio, who declined comment, hadn't been involved in day-to-day operations at Univision for years before it was sold.
The company hasn't named a chairman, and it won't be Saban, who isn't interested in titles. That doesn't mean, however, that he won't be involved. He thinks Univision is leaving money on the table by barely charging the cable and satellite operators to air the network, and he shared a bombshell proposal with Fortune: Charge the operators an unprecedented $1 per subscriber per month for Univision.
To put that in context, CBS earlier this year reportedly got some small operators to pay about 50 cents per viewer per month. Saban boldly suggests that Univision is worth more. "If you are an operator and you have the guts to commit suicide and remove Univision, you'll be... " He trails off, then pretends to wash his hands, the gesture for finito.
Cable operators are sure to balk, but Saban says Univision delivers big market share while CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox have lost viewers to cable, the Internet, and other media. If his fee scheme is successful, Univision could add $1 billion in annual revenue.
It turns out that Saban has had his eye on Univision for the past three years. Back then he went to see the press-shy Perenchio at his Bel Air, Calif., home to let him know of his interest in buying Perenchio's stake in Univision. (The two men aren't close but have common friends, such as CBS CEO Les Moonves.) According to Saban, Perenchio said his Univision holdings weren't for sale but encouraged him to call every month or so, "just to say hello." So Saban started checking in every two weeks.
But he wasn't the only one interested in Univision: Wall Street had long thought Televisa, the Mexican television empire that helped Perenchio acquire Univision in 1992 and thus owned 11% of the company, would be a logical buyer. And indeed, Televisa, along with Bain Capital and Bill Gates' investing arm, Cascade, did put in a $12.2 billion offer for Univision, only to be outbid by Saban and his partners by about $170 million, or 50 cents a share. Just to show that there were hard feelings, the Televisa rep on the Univision board voted against Saban's offer.
Fortunately, the man likes a challenge. In 2003 he led the acquisition of ProSiebenSat.1, a moribund German broadcaster once controlled by the Kirch group. Saban says he had a hard time getting ProSieben's banker to even send him a deal book, he was such a long shot to win the property, which was in bankruptcy.
"All the big muckety-mucks were there," Saban recalls, ticking off the names of A-list moguls whose companies had looked at ProSieben. "You know Mel Karmazin? Rupert Murdoch? Michael Eisner? Dick Parsons? They were all there, and they all went away."
Once he won ProSieben, Saban set about transforming the company, though not all his ideas were well received. He sent its dour newscasters to his friend Murdoch's Fox News to be schooled in pepping up their delivery. He urged management to create a German version of the Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea (known to U.S. audiences as Ugly Betty). The German version of the show, Verliebt in Berlin (In Love in Berlin), turned into a huge hit for ProSieben's Sat 1 channel. This spring, as the Univision deal was closing, Saban also completed the sale of his stake in ProSieben to KKR and Permira for about 29 euros a share - more than quadruple what he paid for the company four years ago.
A ribald polyglot who liberally peppers his conversation with phrases in French, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, and four-letter words, Saban isn't a numbers guy or even an operational whiz. But with ProSieben and now with Univision, he is showing that entrepreneurial skills and taste-making instincts can succeed on a big scale - and he's doing it with his own money, plus the vast sums of private equity floating around right now.
"This is the story of big-time entrepreneurship," says Jonathan Nelson, managing partner at Providence Equity Partners, which invested in ProSieben with Saban and now is a member of the Univision consortium. "There isn't one model for corporate success anymore. Haim offers a more interesting and human model." Nelson is a seasoned media and telecom investor - his portfolio includes MGM and Warner Music - and he certainly doesn't need access to Saban's capital. Still, Nelson says Saban, with his ability to spot big media opportunities, was the first person he called when Providence was checking out Univision.
Saban's ability to seamlessly glide from East Coast bankers to Israeli pols to Hollywood media moguls can be traced to his peripatetic youth. His father was a toy seller - a child can't imagine a better job for a parent - and the close-knit Jewish family lived modestly in Alexandria, Egypt. When Saban was 12, the Suez Crisis of 1956 erupted, forcing the family out of Egypt to Israel by way of Greece.
They left behind everything, and times were so bad, says Saban's wife, Cheryl, that his mother couldn't even rustle up two pans so that she could bake him a cake to celebrate his bar mitzvah. The experience of poverty "is so deep in the family psyche," says his wife of 20 years - they met when she took a job as his assistant and married a year later - "at some time in Haim's young life, he decided that was never going to happen to him again."
He got his start in show biz as the manager of an Israeli Beatles cover band called the Lions. He came to L.A. in 1983 and began a career as a self-described "cartoon schlepper" who built Japan's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers into Fox Kids, a programming joint venture with Rupert Murdoch that, um, morphed into a national cable network. Disney (Charts, Fortune 500) later purchased it for a stunning $5.2 billion, and Saban pocketed some $1.5 billion - money he has donated to several pet causes, including $7 million for the construction of a new Democratic National Committee headquarters building in Washington, D.C.
Saban wasn't even interested in politics until he met Bill Clinton during his first term as President. The meeting was brief, but the friendship grew as Clinton made dozens of trips to California during his presidency. Clinton, Saban says, ignited his interest in using his resources to find solutions to strife in the Middle East. He soon became the Democratic Party's largest single donor. "I don't say this lightly," says Terry McAuliffe, head of the Democratic National Committee at the time. "Haim Saban saved the Democratic Party."
Now Saban is turning his energies to Hillary Clinton. "I think he likes her better than he likes me," jokes Bill Clinton. But as he talks about Saban's support of Senator Clinton, the former President turns serious. "It is something that" - he pauses - "I can hardly talk about it because it really makes me emotional, 'cause he has genuinely come to love and respect her."
Under current campaign-finance laws, donors can give only $2,300 to a candidate's primary run and another $2,300 for the presidential run. That means that to raise the big money, fundraisers like Saban have to knock on a lot of doors. "He makes all those miserable calls you have to make to get your friends to contribute," says Steven Rattner, managing principal of New York-based investment firm Quadrangle and an active Democrat. "He's quite relentless."
For Senator Clinton's run, he has hosted events at his office and at his Beverly Park estate, a sprawling mansion in a gated community that is also home to Reba McEntire, Rod Stewart, Sylvester Stallone, Denzel Washington, and Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone. Saban, Steven Spielberg, and News Corp. (Charts, Fortune 500) executive Peter Chernin are hosting another fundraiser for Clinton in late May.
He tells of traveling with her on his jet (she paid her way, he insists) when the pilot informed him an engine had gone out. Saban says he excitedly conveyed this information to Clinton, who thanked him and went back to her reading. He later asked her how she managed to stay so calm. According to Saban, Clinton explained that she was in the middle of a good paragraph in her book and that there was little she could do about the situation, so why freak out? "This is magnificent!" Saban practically shouts. "This is what you want in a leader. Nobody touches her. She's really the most qualified candidate."
Some of the Clintons' former supporters disagree, most notably fellow mogul and master fundraiser David Geffen, who is backing Barack Obama. (He has also made a contribution to former Senator John Edwards's campaign.) The same week Geffen threw a star-studded fundraiser for the Illinois Senator, he trashed the Clintons, essentially calling them liars, in an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
Saban's response is uncharacteristically subdued. "I'll make three observations," he says crisply. "David is a friend of mine. David is a very smart guy. I don't understand where he's coming from. But let's you and I agree that there are other aspects of this race that are interesting beyond what David Geffen is saying."
Perhaps he's being polite, or maybe he's trying to stop himself from gloating: Clinton is running only slightly ahead of Obama in money from lawyers, and she's trailing in donations from teachers, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. In the entertainment industry, though, she's outgunning her rival by about 22%. Much of that can be attributed to Saban, who by early May had raised $1 million for Clinton, the most by any individual fundraiser. Call it the Haim effect.
Will the Haim effect also work its magic on Univision? "I would like to stress that I am the smallest investor in Univision. Every deal needs a face," he says. (When the choice is one of four private-equity firms or Saban, the guy who wrote the music for Inspector Gadget, can you blame the press for picking Saban?) Indeed, the other investors each put up about $1 billion of the capital for the deal, with Saban kicking in about $300 million of his own money. The group borrowed the rest.
But Saban's charm could also be a valuable asset to Univision in its efforts to smooth relations with Televisa, run by Mexico's powerful Azcárraga family. The late Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, a billionaire known as El Tigre, not only invested in Univision but also supplied it with Televisa's popular (and occasionally risqué) telenovelas. His son, current Televisa CEO Emilio Azcárraga Jean, sat on the Univision board for several years until he abruptly quit in May 2005. The relationship between the companies deteriorated from there, and Televisa sued Univision, saying it wasn't getting the royalties it deserved for its programming. "I know both sides" of that conflict, says Murdoch. "I would say it is very, very difficult, but if there's anyone who can mend that fence, it would be Haim."
As it turns out, Saban is already trying to make nice with Televisa. For starters, he has an existing relationship with the Mexican broadcaster, which aired his kids' programs in the 1990s. He also speaks Spanish. But mostly Saban brings to the table what business school professors might blandly call "people skills," though in Saban's hands the delivery is anything but bland.
During a visit to Televisa before the deal closed, for example, Saban and associate Adam Chesnoff toured a school the company runs for teaching the art of producing telenovelas. The two men watched a taping, and between scenes Saban danced on the set with a dozen actresses. Talk about breaking the ice. Perhaps next time he'll offer them a cucumber.
From the May 14, 2007 issue
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How Haim Saban, a flinty self-made billionaire, plans to turn Univision into the next great network - and put Hillary Clinton in the White House. Fortune's Stephanie Mehta reports.
By Stephanie N. Mehta, Fortune senior writer
May 1 2007: 10:01 AM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- "May I offer you a cucumber?"
That's how Haim Saban begins his account of the battle for Spanish-language media company Univision. It's an unconventional icebreaker, to be sure, but then again, much about the 62-year-old media entrepreneur is out of the ordinary: He gossips with Rupert Murdoch, vacations with Bill Clinton, throws parties with Steven Spielberg, and confers with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
He is worth an estimated $2.8 billion. Yet he eschews power lunches at the Grill in Los Angeles, choosing instead to eat sushi nearly every weekday with his driver, Laine Burton.
The cucumber, it turns out, is part of an afternoon snack that also includes tomatoes and pepper jack cheese. "It's very low fat," says the fitness-conscious Saban. (He works out an hour or more daily.)
"He could be the subject of a movie or a TV series," former President Bill Clinton told Fortune. "He's a fascinating character."
Despite this ready-for-prime-time personality, Saban (sa-BAHN) has preferred to work behind the scenes. But two events are changing his ability to stage-manage far from the headlines. First, he is attempting to put Senator Hillary Clinton in the White House at a time when Senator Barack Obama is catching fire with L.A.'s Gulfstream liberals. Second, he and a consortium of private-equity players bought Univision, the largest Hispanic media company in the U.S., in March.
The $12.3 billion acquisition battle strained Univision's relations with Mexican media giant and rival bidder Grupo Televisa (Charts), its main supplier of programs. The deal, which should have been a snap to close, has been singled out for some harsh regulatory treatment: Before the Federal Communications Commission signed off on it, the buyers had to agree to pay a hefty $24 million fine to settle charges that the network wasn't airing enough children's programming.
Univision claimed it was meeting its educational mandates by running Complices al Rescate (Friends to the Rescue), a telenovela about 11-year-old twin girls who swap identities. Not exactly Plaza Sesamo.
Fortified by his veggies and cheese, Saban explains why Univision and New York's junior Senator will both be winners in 2008. First, Univision: Under founder A. Jerrold Perenchio, the company had grown to nearly $2 billion in annual revenue, but Saban, who put in a chunk of his own money, and his deep-pocketed partners - Providence Equity Partners, TPG, Thomas H. Lee Partners, and Madison Dearborn - think Univision can still grow sales in the double digits. That would be a tall order for ABC, CBS, or NBC, but Saban isn't sweating it, because by the year 2010, the Hispanic population will grow 17% and will be spending about $1.1 trillion a year.
The trouble with Saban's vision is that for now, only a fraction of the top U.S. brands advertise on Univision, partly because some key decision-makers picture its viewers as blue-collar immigrants rather than affluent suburbanites. "Marketing to Hispanics is something that companies need to make a priority," says Caleb Windover, managing director of ad buyer MediaVest's multicultural division. Before Madison Avenue will open the spigot, Univision needs a face to woo its media buyers.
That job falls to new CEO Joe Uva, who most recently ran ad-buying agency OMD. Like his predecessor, Perenchio, Uva doesn't speak Spanish, but he will go out and personally press the flesh with marketers and suppliers. The 76-year-old Perenchio, who declined comment, hadn't been involved in day-to-day operations at Univision for years before it was sold.
The company hasn't named a chairman, and it won't be Saban, who isn't interested in titles. That doesn't mean, however, that he won't be involved. He thinks Univision is leaving money on the table by barely charging the cable and satellite operators to air the network, and he shared a bombshell proposal with Fortune: Charge the operators an unprecedented $1 per subscriber per month for Univision.
To put that in context, CBS earlier this year reportedly got some small operators to pay about 50 cents per viewer per month. Saban boldly suggests that Univision is worth more. "If you are an operator and you have the guts to commit suicide and remove Univision, you'll be... " He trails off, then pretends to wash his hands, the gesture for finito.
Cable operators are sure to balk, but Saban says Univision delivers big market share while CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox have lost viewers to cable, the Internet, and other media. If his fee scheme is successful, Univision could add $1 billion in annual revenue.
It turns out that Saban has had his eye on Univision for the past three years. Back then he went to see the press-shy Perenchio at his Bel Air, Calif., home to let him know of his interest in buying Perenchio's stake in Univision. (The two men aren't close but have common friends, such as CBS CEO Les Moonves.) According to Saban, Perenchio said his Univision holdings weren't for sale but encouraged him to call every month or so, "just to say hello." So Saban started checking in every two weeks.
But he wasn't the only one interested in Univision: Wall Street had long thought Televisa, the Mexican television empire that helped Perenchio acquire Univision in 1992 and thus owned 11% of the company, would be a logical buyer. And indeed, Televisa, along with Bain Capital and Bill Gates' investing arm, Cascade, did put in a $12.2 billion offer for Univision, only to be outbid by Saban and his partners by about $170 million, or 50 cents a share. Just to show that there were hard feelings, the Televisa rep on the Univision board voted against Saban's offer.
Fortunately, the man likes a challenge. In 2003 he led the acquisition of ProSiebenSat.1, a moribund German broadcaster once controlled by the Kirch group. Saban says he had a hard time getting ProSieben's banker to even send him a deal book, he was such a long shot to win the property, which was in bankruptcy.
"All the big muckety-mucks were there," Saban recalls, ticking off the names of A-list moguls whose companies had looked at ProSieben. "You know Mel Karmazin? Rupert Murdoch? Michael Eisner? Dick Parsons? They were all there, and they all went away."
Once he won ProSieben, Saban set about transforming the company, though not all his ideas were well received. He sent its dour newscasters to his friend Murdoch's Fox News to be schooled in pepping up their delivery. He urged management to create a German version of the Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea (known to U.S. audiences as Ugly Betty). The German version of the show, Verliebt in Berlin (In Love in Berlin), turned into a huge hit for ProSieben's Sat 1 channel. This spring, as the Univision deal was closing, Saban also completed the sale of his stake in ProSieben to KKR and Permira for about 29 euros a share - more than quadruple what he paid for the company four years ago.
A ribald polyglot who liberally peppers his conversation with phrases in French, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, and four-letter words, Saban isn't a numbers guy or even an operational whiz. But with ProSieben and now with Univision, he is showing that entrepreneurial skills and taste-making instincts can succeed on a big scale - and he's doing it with his own money, plus the vast sums of private equity floating around right now.
"This is the story of big-time entrepreneurship," says Jonathan Nelson, managing partner at Providence Equity Partners, which invested in ProSieben with Saban and now is a member of the Univision consortium. "There isn't one model for corporate success anymore. Haim offers a more interesting and human model." Nelson is a seasoned media and telecom investor - his portfolio includes MGM and Warner Music - and he certainly doesn't need access to Saban's capital. Still, Nelson says Saban, with his ability to spot big media opportunities, was the first person he called when Providence was checking out Univision.
Saban's ability to seamlessly glide from East Coast bankers to Israeli pols to Hollywood media moguls can be traced to his peripatetic youth. His father was a toy seller - a child can't imagine a better job for a parent - and the close-knit Jewish family lived modestly in Alexandria, Egypt. When Saban was 12, the Suez Crisis of 1956 erupted, forcing the family out of Egypt to Israel by way of Greece.
They left behind everything, and times were so bad, says Saban's wife, Cheryl, that his mother couldn't even rustle up two pans so that she could bake him a cake to celebrate his bar mitzvah. The experience of poverty "is so deep in the family psyche," says his wife of 20 years - they met when she took a job as his assistant and married a year later - "at some time in Haim's young life, he decided that was never going to happen to him again."
He got his start in show biz as the manager of an Israeli Beatles cover band called the Lions. He came to L.A. in 1983 and began a career as a self-described "cartoon schlepper" who built Japan's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers into Fox Kids, a programming joint venture with Rupert Murdoch that, um, morphed into a national cable network. Disney (Charts, Fortune 500) later purchased it for a stunning $5.2 billion, and Saban pocketed some $1.5 billion - money he has donated to several pet causes, including $7 million for the construction of a new Democratic National Committee headquarters building in Washington, D.C.
Saban wasn't even interested in politics until he met Bill Clinton during his first term as President. The meeting was brief, but the friendship grew as Clinton made dozens of trips to California during his presidency. Clinton, Saban says, ignited his interest in using his resources to find solutions to strife in the Middle East. He soon became the Democratic Party's largest single donor. "I don't say this lightly," says Terry McAuliffe, head of the Democratic National Committee at the time. "Haim Saban saved the Democratic Party."
Now Saban is turning his energies to Hillary Clinton. "I think he likes her better than he likes me," jokes Bill Clinton. But as he talks about Saban's support of Senator Clinton, the former President turns serious. "It is something that" - he pauses - "I can hardly talk about it because it really makes me emotional, 'cause he has genuinely come to love and respect her."
Under current campaign-finance laws, donors can give only $2,300 to a candidate's primary run and another $2,300 for the presidential run. That means that to raise the big money, fundraisers like Saban have to knock on a lot of doors. "He makes all those miserable calls you have to make to get your friends to contribute," says Steven Rattner, managing principal of New York-based investment firm Quadrangle and an active Democrat. "He's quite relentless."
For Senator Clinton's run, he has hosted events at his office and at his Beverly Park estate, a sprawling mansion in a gated community that is also home to Reba McEntire, Rod Stewart, Sylvester Stallone, Denzel Washington, and Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone. Saban, Steven Spielberg, and News Corp. (Charts, Fortune 500) executive Peter Chernin are hosting another fundraiser for Clinton in late May.
He tells of traveling with her on his jet (she paid her way, he insists) when the pilot informed him an engine had gone out. Saban says he excitedly conveyed this information to Clinton, who thanked him and went back to her reading. He later asked her how she managed to stay so calm. According to Saban, Clinton explained that she was in the middle of a good paragraph in her book and that there was little she could do about the situation, so why freak out? "This is magnificent!" Saban practically shouts. "This is what you want in a leader. Nobody touches her. She's really the most qualified candidate."
Some of the Clintons' former supporters disagree, most notably fellow mogul and master fundraiser David Geffen, who is backing Barack Obama. (He has also made a contribution to former Senator John Edwards's campaign.) The same week Geffen threw a star-studded fundraiser for the Illinois Senator, he trashed the Clintons, essentially calling them liars, in an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
Saban's response is uncharacteristically subdued. "I'll make three observations," he says crisply. "David is a friend of mine. David is a very smart guy. I don't understand where he's coming from. But let's you and I agree that there are other aspects of this race that are interesting beyond what David Geffen is saying."
Perhaps he's being polite, or maybe he's trying to stop himself from gloating: Clinton is running only slightly ahead of Obama in money from lawyers, and she's trailing in donations from teachers, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. In the entertainment industry, though, she's outgunning her rival by about 22%. Much of that can be attributed to Saban, who by early May had raised $1 million for Clinton, the most by any individual fundraiser. Call it the Haim effect.
Will the Haim effect also work its magic on Univision? "I would like to stress that I am the smallest investor in Univision. Every deal needs a face," he says. (When the choice is one of four private-equity firms or Saban, the guy who wrote the music for Inspector Gadget, can you blame the press for picking Saban?) Indeed, the other investors each put up about $1 billion of the capital for the deal, with Saban kicking in about $300 million of his own money. The group borrowed the rest.
But Saban's charm could also be a valuable asset to Univision in its efforts to smooth relations with Televisa, run by Mexico's powerful Azcárraga family. The late Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, a billionaire known as El Tigre, not only invested in Univision but also supplied it with Televisa's popular (and occasionally risqué) telenovelas. His son, current Televisa CEO Emilio Azcárraga Jean, sat on the Univision board for several years until he abruptly quit in May 2005. The relationship between the companies deteriorated from there, and Televisa sued Univision, saying it wasn't getting the royalties it deserved for its programming. "I know both sides" of that conflict, says Murdoch. "I would say it is very, very difficult, but if there's anyone who can mend that fence, it would be Haim."
As it turns out, Saban is already trying to make nice with Televisa. For starters, he has an existing relationship with the Mexican broadcaster, which aired his kids' programs in the 1990s. He also speaks Spanish. But mostly Saban brings to the table what business school professors might blandly call "people skills," though in Saban's hands the delivery is anything but bland.
During a visit to Televisa before the deal closed, for example, Saban and associate Adam Chesnoff toured a school the company runs for teaching the art of producing telenovelas. The two men watched a taping, and between scenes Saban danced on the set with a dozen actresses. Talk about breaking the ice. Perhaps next time he'll offer them a cucumber.
From the May 14, 2007 issue
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Robert Parry: The Clinton Audacity
consortiumnews.com
The Clinton Audacity
By Robert Parry
January 25, 2008
Some rank-and-file Democrats who have weathered three decades of Republican hardball politics aren’t sure what to think when Bill and Hillary Clinton attack Barack Obama over the Iraq War, his attitude toward Ronald Reagan, and his relationship with a sleazy real-estate developer.
On each topic, the Clintons are arguably more vulnerable than Obama: Hillary Clinton voted to give George W. Bush authorization to invade Iraq (while Obama opposed the invasion), the Clintons both have praised Reagan far more than Obama has, and the Clintons had closer ties to an ethically challenged developer, Whitewater’s James McDougal, than Obama apparently had with Tony Rezko.
It’s as if the Clintons are channeling Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, whose legendary audacity included attacking an opponent on a strong point even when their candidate was more vulnerable. Think Rove’s assault on John Kerry’s Vietnam War heroism, though George W. Bush had shirked his National Guard duty.
But some Democrats who send us e-mails view this political chutzpah as a good thing, that the Clintons are showing they’ve learned from the Republican scorched-earth tactics and thus are best qualified to wrest control of the White House from the GOP.
These Democrats ridicule what they call Obama’s “kumbayah” strategy of trying to achieve some form of unity among America’s bitterly divided political factions. The mocking reference to “kumbayah” relates to the campfire song derived from an old African spiritual.
Obama’s “kumbayah” is dismissed as either hopelessly naïve or disingenuous.
Some of these hard-bitten Democrats, who now are rallying behind Hillary Clinton, also say they suspect that Obama is a “closet DLCer,” a reference to the centrist Democratic Leadership Conference, where ironically Bill Clinton was chairman for two years.
As First Lady, Hillary Clinton pushed her own DLC-like strategy, the concept of “triangulation” which rejected traditional Democratic positions and distanced the Clintons from many rank-and-file Democrats, in favor of “third way” compromises with Republicans.
In her memoir, Living History, Mrs. Clinton claims credit for bringing Republican pollster Dick Morris back into President Clinton’s inner circle in 1994, overriding resistance from others in the White House who feared that Morris would be a right-wing mole.
“Nobody in the Democratic power structure liked or trusted him,” she acknowledged.
While Morris did help advance Mrs. Clinton’s “triangulation” strategies, he ultimately proved his critics right by betraying the Clintons and going on TV to decry Democrats in the most venomous terms, helped by the insider credibility that Hillary Clinton had bestowed on him.
Attacking Obama on Reagan
Regarding Reagan, the Clintons have excoriated Obama for stating in a Nevada newspaper interview that the Republican icon “changed the trajectory of America.” At the Jan. 21 debate, Hillary Clinton accused Obama of “admiring Ronald Reagan.”
Obama denied Clinton’s characterization, claiming he was just acknowledging Reagan’s historical significance. The Illinois senator also noted that Clinton had “provided much more fulsome praise” of Reagan in Tom Brokaw’s book, Boom!, which quotes Clinton as praising Reagan’s flexibility.
“He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements,” she said. “He played the balance and the music beautifully.”
Clinton also found herself explaining remarks she made in gaining the endorsement of the Salmon Press weeklies in New Hampshire. The endorsement editorial said Clinton’s list of favorite presidents included “Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan” – plus her husband, Bill Clinton.
Trying to back away from the praise of Bush I and Reagan, the Clinton campaign released a statement quoting the Salmon Press co-owner saying “the question posed was originally what portraits would you hang in the White House if you were President and as the dialogue progressed, who are the presidents you admire most? … She did not say Reagan was her favorite President.”
[For more details on these disputes, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s Dubious Praise for Reagan” or “The Democrats-Praise-Reagan Game.”]
Bill on Ron
However, it turns out that Bill Clinton may have been one of the Democratic pioneers in the tactic of hailing Reagan as a way to demonstrate independence from the Democratic “base.”
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. recalls how Bill Clinton wowed the Post’s editorial board in October 1991 when he credited Reagan with winning the Cold War and praised his “rhetoric in defense of freedom.”
"The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing," Clinton said, with the caveat that there was some wasted U.S. money.
Clinton earned high marks from the Post’s editors and other news organizations for his “free-thinking” about Reagan and his courage in “saying things most Democrats wouldn’t allow to pass their lips,” Dionne wrote. [Washington Post, Jan. 25, 2008]
But Clinton wasn't really demonstrating much courage; he was embracing the Establishment’s safe conventional wisdom on Reagan. It was another “Sister Souljah moment” in which Clinton essentially put down the congressional Democrats and independent investigators who had risked their reputations by critically examining Reagan’s record.
Clinton’s praise for Reagan supposedly winning the Cold War coincided with dramatic Senate Intelligence Committee hearings in fall 1991 when veteran CIA analysts stepped out of the shadows to testify against George H.W. Bush’s nominee for CIA director, Robert Gates, accusing him of politicizing the intelligence analysis in the 1980s.
A principal point of these analysts was that Gates had helped the Reagan administration exaggerate the Soviet threat in the early 1980s and thus obscure evidence of the communist bloc’s disintegration, all the better to justify an expensive military buildup and support for bloody wars in the Third World.
The signs of Soviet weakness already were apparent in the 1970s when many experts concluded that Moscow was facing technological and economic crises, and was eager for serious negotiations with the West. That analysis – that the Cold War was nearing its end – gave rise to the “détente” strategies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
However, old Cold Warriors and a new breed of intellectuals, known as the neoconservatives, resisted this analysis and insisted that the Soviet Union actually was on the march, building highly sophisticated weapons and still moving toward world domination.
Though ultimately shown to be false, these arguments carried the day after Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980. To scare the American people into support for a massive arms buildup, the neocons hyped evidence of Soviet capabilities, essentially setting up a straw man that Reagan’s military expansion could get credit for knocking down.
In 1991-92, while Bill Clinton was cozying up to this Reagan legacy, several investigations were underway into other Reagan-era deceptions – from Republican collaboration with Iran’s radical mullahs, to secret military assistance for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, to corruption and human rights abuses in Central America.
By giving Reagan credit for “winning the Cold War,” Bill Clinton bought into the key justification for ignoring the crimes committed during the Reagan-Bush years. He also was earning brownie points from the journalistic and political elites in Washington.
Under the Rug
After defeating George H.W. Bush in November 1992, Clinton was perfectly positioned to help pending investigations into Reagan-Bush crimes – from special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh’s Iran-Contra probe to Rep. Henry Gonzalez’s examination of the Iraq-gate scandal to a House task force’s review of the October Surprise issue, whether Reagan’s 1980 campaign had colluded with Iran behind Jimmy Carter’s back.
Even though the evidence in all these cases pointed toward Republican guilt, Clinton and other key Washington Democrats, such as Rep. Lee Hamilton, swept the scandals under the rug, all the better to gain some bipartisan favor from the Republicans. [See Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege, or Consortiumnews.com’s “The Clintons & the Bushes.”]
As it turned out, Clinton’s collaboration in these cover-ups didn’t work out exactly as he planned. Spared from having to defend Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the Republicans and their right-wing attack machine went after Bill and Hillary Clinton, who remained on the defensive for nearly their entire eight years in office.
Now, the Clintons are battling for a new lease on the White House – and they are applying lessons learned from the win-at-all-cost Republicans to discredit Barack Obama.
Though Obama had the foresight to oppose George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion, the Clintons accuse Obama of lacking consistency in his anti-war positions. Bill Clinton called the story of Obama’s war opposition a “fairy tale,” ignoring the fact that Hillary Clinton was a war supporter from 2002 almost until the day she jumped into the Democratic race.
The Clintons have sought to make an issue, too, out of Obama’s links to low-income housing developer Tony Rezko, who is under federal indictment in an Illinois corruption probe. [For some background, see Chicago Sun-Times article, Nov. 5, 2006.]
However, the Clintons have had their own difficulties in similar areas, from their ties to the swindler Jim McDougal during their Arkansas days, to the Marc Rich pardon while in the White House, to donations from fugitive Norman Hsu in Campaign 2008.
Most audacious of all, however, the Clintons are making an issue out of Obama’s mild praise of Ronald Reagan, when they have spent years not only complimenting Reagan but protecting his dubious legacy.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
The Clinton Audacity
By Robert Parry
January 25, 2008
Some rank-and-file Democrats who have weathered three decades of Republican hardball politics aren’t sure what to think when Bill and Hillary Clinton attack Barack Obama over the Iraq War, his attitude toward Ronald Reagan, and his relationship with a sleazy real-estate developer.
On each topic, the Clintons are arguably more vulnerable than Obama: Hillary Clinton voted to give George W. Bush authorization to invade Iraq (while Obama opposed the invasion), the Clintons both have praised Reagan far more than Obama has, and the Clintons had closer ties to an ethically challenged developer, Whitewater’s James McDougal, than Obama apparently had with Tony Rezko.
It’s as if the Clintons are channeling Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, whose legendary audacity included attacking an opponent on a strong point even when their candidate was more vulnerable. Think Rove’s assault on John Kerry’s Vietnam War heroism, though George W. Bush had shirked his National Guard duty.
But some Democrats who send us e-mails view this political chutzpah as a good thing, that the Clintons are showing they’ve learned from the Republican scorched-earth tactics and thus are best qualified to wrest control of the White House from the GOP.
These Democrats ridicule what they call Obama’s “kumbayah” strategy of trying to achieve some form of unity among America’s bitterly divided political factions. The mocking reference to “kumbayah” relates to the campfire song derived from an old African spiritual.
Obama’s “kumbayah” is dismissed as either hopelessly naïve or disingenuous.
Some of these hard-bitten Democrats, who now are rallying behind Hillary Clinton, also say they suspect that Obama is a “closet DLCer,” a reference to the centrist Democratic Leadership Conference, where ironically Bill Clinton was chairman for two years.
As First Lady, Hillary Clinton pushed her own DLC-like strategy, the concept of “triangulation” which rejected traditional Democratic positions and distanced the Clintons from many rank-and-file Democrats, in favor of “third way” compromises with Republicans.
In her memoir, Living History, Mrs. Clinton claims credit for bringing Republican pollster Dick Morris back into President Clinton’s inner circle in 1994, overriding resistance from others in the White House who feared that Morris would be a right-wing mole.
“Nobody in the Democratic power structure liked or trusted him,” she acknowledged.
While Morris did help advance Mrs. Clinton’s “triangulation” strategies, he ultimately proved his critics right by betraying the Clintons and going on TV to decry Democrats in the most venomous terms, helped by the insider credibility that Hillary Clinton had bestowed on him.
Attacking Obama on Reagan
Regarding Reagan, the Clintons have excoriated Obama for stating in a Nevada newspaper interview that the Republican icon “changed the trajectory of America.” At the Jan. 21 debate, Hillary Clinton accused Obama of “admiring Ronald Reagan.”
Obama denied Clinton’s characterization, claiming he was just acknowledging Reagan’s historical significance. The Illinois senator also noted that Clinton had “provided much more fulsome praise” of Reagan in Tom Brokaw’s book, Boom!, which quotes Clinton as praising Reagan’s flexibility.
“He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements,” she said. “He played the balance and the music beautifully.”
Clinton also found herself explaining remarks she made in gaining the endorsement of the Salmon Press weeklies in New Hampshire. The endorsement editorial said Clinton’s list of favorite presidents included “Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan” – plus her husband, Bill Clinton.
Trying to back away from the praise of Bush I and Reagan, the Clinton campaign released a statement quoting the Salmon Press co-owner saying “the question posed was originally what portraits would you hang in the White House if you were President and as the dialogue progressed, who are the presidents you admire most? … She did not say Reagan was her favorite President.”
[For more details on these disputes, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s Dubious Praise for Reagan” or “The Democrats-Praise-Reagan Game.”]
Bill on Ron
However, it turns out that Bill Clinton may have been one of the Democratic pioneers in the tactic of hailing Reagan as a way to demonstrate independence from the Democratic “base.”
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. recalls how Bill Clinton wowed the Post’s editorial board in October 1991 when he credited Reagan with winning the Cold War and praised his “rhetoric in defense of freedom.”
"The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing," Clinton said, with the caveat that there was some wasted U.S. money.
Clinton earned high marks from the Post’s editors and other news organizations for his “free-thinking” about Reagan and his courage in “saying things most Democrats wouldn’t allow to pass their lips,” Dionne wrote. [Washington Post, Jan. 25, 2008]
But Clinton wasn't really demonstrating much courage; he was embracing the Establishment’s safe conventional wisdom on Reagan. It was another “Sister Souljah moment” in which Clinton essentially put down the congressional Democrats and independent investigators who had risked their reputations by critically examining Reagan’s record.
Clinton’s praise for Reagan supposedly winning the Cold War coincided with dramatic Senate Intelligence Committee hearings in fall 1991 when veteran CIA analysts stepped out of the shadows to testify against George H.W. Bush’s nominee for CIA director, Robert Gates, accusing him of politicizing the intelligence analysis in the 1980s.
A principal point of these analysts was that Gates had helped the Reagan administration exaggerate the Soviet threat in the early 1980s and thus obscure evidence of the communist bloc’s disintegration, all the better to justify an expensive military buildup and support for bloody wars in the Third World.
The signs of Soviet weakness already were apparent in the 1970s when many experts concluded that Moscow was facing technological and economic crises, and was eager for serious negotiations with the West. That analysis – that the Cold War was nearing its end – gave rise to the “détente” strategies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
However, old Cold Warriors and a new breed of intellectuals, known as the neoconservatives, resisted this analysis and insisted that the Soviet Union actually was on the march, building highly sophisticated weapons and still moving toward world domination.
Though ultimately shown to be false, these arguments carried the day after Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980. To scare the American people into support for a massive arms buildup, the neocons hyped evidence of Soviet capabilities, essentially setting up a straw man that Reagan’s military expansion could get credit for knocking down.
In 1991-92, while Bill Clinton was cozying up to this Reagan legacy, several investigations were underway into other Reagan-era deceptions – from Republican collaboration with Iran’s radical mullahs, to secret military assistance for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, to corruption and human rights abuses in Central America.
By giving Reagan credit for “winning the Cold War,” Bill Clinton bought into the key justification for ignoring the crimes committed during the Reagan-Bush years. He also was earning brownie points from the journalistic and political elites in Washington.
Under the Rug
After defeating George H.W. Bush in November 1992, Clinton was perfectly positioned to help pending investigations into Reagan-Bush crimes – from special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh’s Iran-Contra probe to Rep. Henry Gonzalez’s examination of the Iraq-gate scandal to a House task force’s review of the October Surprise issue, whether Reagan’s 1980 campaign had colluded with Iran behind Jimmy Carter’s back.
Even though the evidence in all these cases pointed toward Republican guilt, Clinton and other key Washington Democrats, such as Rep. Lee Hamilton, swept the scandals under the rug, all the better to gain some bipartisan favor from the Republicans. [See Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege, or Consortiumnews.com’s “The Clintons & the Bushes.”]
As it turned out, Clinton’s collaboration in these cover-ups didn’t work out exactly as he planned. Spared from having to defend Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the Republicans and their right-wing attack machine went after Bill and Hillary Clinton, who remained on the defensive for nearly their entire eight years in office.
Now, the Clintons are battling for a new lease on the White House – and they are applying lessons learned from the win-at-all-cost Republicans to discredit Barack Obama.
Though Obama had the foresight to oppose George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion, the Clintons accuse Obama of lacking consistency in his anti-war positions. Bill Clinton called the story of Obama’s war opposition a “fairy tale,” ignoring the fact that Hillary Clinton was a war supporter from 2002 almost until the day she jumped into the Democratic race.
The Clintons have sought to make an issue, too, out of Obama’s links to low-income housing developer Tony Rezko, who is under federal indictment in an Illinois corruption probe. [For some background, see Chicago Sun-Times article, Nov. 5, 2006.]
However, the Clintons have had their own difficulties in similar areas, from their ties to the swindler Jim McDougal during their Arkansas days, to the Marc Rich pardon while in the White House, to donations from fugitive Norman Hsu in Campaign 2008.
Most audacious of all, however, the Clintons are making an issue out of Obama’s mild praise of Ronald Reagan, when they have spent years not only complimenting Reagan but protecting his dubious legacy.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
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