Thursday, September 28, 2006
Gingrich On...
1) ...George W. Bush. In an interview from his new book, Ryan Sager interviews Newt.
2) ...Bill Clinton and the "blow-up" on Fox. He's interviewed on Good Morning America.
I think Newt is generally correct on the Clinton issue. Whether Clinton went "too far," I'm not so sure. One of the great failings of Republicans in the 1990s was their failure to understand the public in the way Bill Clinton did.
The most vivid example was the tactical disaster of releasing Clinton's videotaped grand-jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The belief was the public would recoil when they saw the president discussing his affair with Lewinsky and the whole "meaning of word 'is'."
Didn't happen. The public instead recoiled on Ken Starr and the Republicans for releasing it.
Ben Smith notes a recent poll that shows a majority of Americans blame Bush more than Clinton for bin Laden being on the run. Now, this is something of a silly poll. How can a president who has been out of power for six years have much "responsibility" for a terrorist being alive or free?
ABC asks if this debate will backfire on Democrats? Bill Clinton is a remarkable wildcard. When he was president, he managed to confound whatever the conventional wisdom was. A question could be asked: Are the Republicans spending too much time on Bill Clinton -- and not enough on themselves (at least at the national "macro" level)?
Technorati Tags: Republicans, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton
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2) ...Bill Clinton and the "blow-up" on Fox. He's interviewed on Good Morning America.
I think Newt is generally correct on the Clinton issue. Whether Clinton went "too far," I'm not so sure. One of the great failings of Republicans in the 1990s was their failure to understand the public in the way Bill Clinton did.
The most vivid example was the tactical disaster of releasing Clinton's videotaped grand-jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The belief was the public would recoil when they saw the president discussing his affair with Lewinsky and the whole "meaning of word 'is'."
Didn't happen. The public instead recoiled on Ken Starr and the Republicans for releasing it.
Ben Smith notes a recent poll that shows a majority of Americans blame Bush more than Clinton for bin Laden being on the run. Now, this is something of a silly poll. How can a president who has been out of power for six years have much "responsibility" for a terrorist being alive or free?
ABC asks if this debate will backfire on Democrats? Bill Clinton is a remarkable wildcard. When he was president, he managed to confound whatever the conventional wisdom was. A question could be asked: Are the Republicans spending too much time on Bill Clinton -- and not enough on themselves (at least at the national "macro" level)?
Technorati Tags: Republicans, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton
