http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10728737%255E2703,00.htmlClinton's outburst: racism at the top
The former US president has charged the Republicans with bigotry and judicial manipulation, writes Peter Wilson
11sep04
BILL Clinton has delivered an extraordinary blast at America's top judge, William Rehnquist, and an uncharacteristically bitter attack on Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Speaking before his recent health scare, the former president accused Rehnquist, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, of deliberately politicising the system of appointing independent investigators, leading to years of relentless, politically motivated inquiries into his presidency.
In an interview with The Weekend Australian, Clinton dropped the affection with which he usually discusses Reagan and the civility he affords the current President to accuse both men of deliberately using racist electoral appeals to win the White House.
Clinton said Rehnquist, Reagan and Bush were part of a far-Right branch of the Republican Party made up of the "spiritual heirs" of white southern racists, who still used the tactics of personal destruction employed by racists in their campaign to block civil rights for blacks.
He accused Rehnquist of deliberately appointing a highly partisan Republican, David Sentelle, in 1994 to chair a three-member panel of judges empowered to appoint special counsels to conduct inquiries into presidents. <snip>
Mr Bush's supporters, for instance, used "an utterly sleazy smear" against John McCain during the 2000 Republican primary race by highlighting the fact the Arizona senator had adopted a child from Bangladesh, Ornstein said. Peter Wilson's full interview with Clinton appears in The Weekend Australian Magazine