Joe Conason: The vast right-wing conspiracy is back

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/10/05/clinton_obama/


The vast right-wing conspiracy is back

Some of Bill Clinton's most unhinged foes are flinging wild charges at Obama. This time, they're better organized

By Joe Conason


Oct. 5, 2009 | Wearily familiar as he is with the "vast right-wing conspiracy," Bill Clinton says the network that sought to destroy him and his wife, Hillary, remains malignant as ever, yet lacks the might of a decade ago. "It's not as strong as it was, because America's changed," he told David Gregory on "Meet the Press." "But it's as virulent as it was."

Whether Clinton is correct about the current condition of his old adversaries can best be measured by the passage or wreckage of healthcare reform and the outcome of next year's congressional midterm elections -- the same early milestones that marked the beginning of Clinton's tumultuous White House tenure. Perhaps Barack Obama will be saved by political demography and decent intentions, as the former president tried to assure Gregory; perhaps he and his administration will prove less vulnerable to intrigue and propaganda and less flawed than their predecessors.

What Obama should anticipate -- indeed, what he is already encountering -- is a cascade of slurs, threats and rhetorical violence that reanimates all of the worst themes of the bad old days. That wave will inevitably damage the president and his hopes for change, even if the majority of Americans is less receptive to right-wing messages than they once were. The greasy machinery once used to grind Clinton down has grown larger and more sophisticated by orders of magnitude, from Fox News Channel (which did not exist during his first term) to all of the conservative digital outlets that enable echoing and organizing on a truly vast scale.

The negative mythologizing of Obama bears a remarkable resemblance in tone and style if not precisely in content to the attacks on Clinton. "It's like when they accused me of murder, and all that stuff they did," said the former president -- presumably a reference to the wilder fantasies circulated in conservative publications about Obama, from the forged Kenyan birth certificates to the president's supposed plans to inflict corruption, homosexual radicals and Muslim jihad on innocent Americans. While some of the current themes mimic those deployed against Clinton, there are generational differences and the obvious fact that Obama is not just notionally "the first black president." That status evokes a special animus on the far right, of course -- although Clinton at least had earned the lifelong hatred of his most dedicated enemy, "Justice Jim" Johnson of Arkansas, for fighting segregation and racism in Arkansas.

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As Clinton himself pointed out, the same forces that wanted to defeat and destroy his administration have predictably mobilized against Obama. For the moment, however, those forces cannot muster the same kind of concerted attack that almost brought Clinton down. They may still have Scaife's money but they have no independent counsel, like the partisan zealot Kenneth Starr. They have no scandal-mongering allies in the mainstream media, like the late William Safire of the New York Times. They have no congressional majority, and nobody like Newt Gingrich to build and lead one -- at least not yet.

Yet while the Republican right struggles for credibility, leaving Obama with breathing space, he and his aides ought to reconsider their scornful and high-handed attitude toward the progressive wing of their own party. They might just lose the Democratic majority next year and find themselves facing the sharp end of a series of congressional investigations or worse. If and when that happens, as Clinton could remind them, the progressives will be their only reliable allies.

I'm sorry it's happening all over again, but certainly not surprised.

and they found bill c. a good 'victim,' for lots of reasons.

Morning, Cap'n.