Bill Clinton’s Strategic Emotion

January 21, 2008, 6:55 pm
Bill Clinton’s Strategic Emotion
By MATTHEW CONTINETTI
Remember September 2006? It was a little over a month before Election Day when Bill Clinton gave an interview to Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace. The peg for the interview was a summit held by the Clinton Global Initiative, one of the former president’s many philanthropic activities. Wallace asked several questions about the initiative, but four minutes into the interview also brought up criticisms of the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism policies that had been aired in Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Lawrence Wright’s history of Al Qaeda, “The Looming Tower.” Whereupon Clinton went … ballistic. His face turned red. His voice rose. He tore into Wallace, accusing the veteran journalist, who over the decades has worked for several “mainstream” networks and whose credibility seldom has been questioned, of being a right-wing shill. He claimed the “neocons” who now say he did too little to capture or kill Osama bin Laden had in fact during the 1990s been highly critical of his administration’s emphasis on counterterrorism, that they “thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden” and “had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office.”

The former president neglected to name which “neocons” had said he had been “obsessed” with bin Laden, nor did he directly rebut the specific criticisms made in Wright’s book. That’s not what mattered, however. What mattered was Clinton’s fury, his outburst, his apparently uncontrollable emotion.


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And yet Senator Clinton’s recent string of success continues. She has won close, hard-won victories in the New Hampshire primary and the Nevada caucuses. She has the opportunity to outperform expectations this week in South Carolina, and is in a strong position to win major state contests on Super Tuesday. Mr. Clinton’s comments to the talk show host Charlie Rose in December that America would be “rolling the dice” by electing Barack Obama; his rambling description in New Hampshire of Obama’s Iraq record as a “fairy tale”; his aggressive response to a question from a television news reporter in Nevada concerning an abstruse legal battle over caucus rules — each display of emotion has earned headlines and the disapproval of American opinion makers, but has also done little to stop the Clinton Restoration from progressing.

<snip>

These days the former president’s “outbursts” serve a dual purpose: they lend the impression that Senator Clinton is the insurgent running against the media-supported Obama, while also creating the illusion that it is the former president, not his wife, who is actually the candidate for the Democratic nomination. Far from hurting Senator Clinton — who also understands how to deploy strategic emotion, as we saw before the New Hampshire Democratic primary — former President Clinton effectively has rallied a coalition of Democrats to her cause.

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/bill-clintons-strategic-emotion/index.html?ref=opinion

I think everything the Clintons do is calculated and strategic - they are political animals to the core!

That's what will get Democrats back in office. You should be glad they are political animals. You don't think the ReThugs will lay down quietly and snooze and not bring out every dishonest tactic in the book? Yes, we NEED an emotional hot tempered take no crap political animal. I really don't think Obama will be up to defending us Dems adequately. He's no match for the evil neocons and Thugs in general. I know that will tick off a lot of Obamaites...but that's my humble opinion.

all McCain has to do is point out what liars the Clintons are, that they govern by polls (which is why Clinton didn't even read the intelligence reports) and that he is best to be commander-in-chief.

It's all about the trust stupid, and the Clintons will never win on that issue. They are running their campaign like it's 1992. It might win them the primary, but it will cost them the general election.

bullshit! Every word of it! Prove any of your statements. They are mostly all memes spread by the media and Rethugs just like Gore is a liar and invented the internet etc. etc. etc. Just hogwash and repeated and repeated meme. You know...if you repeat it enough it becomes the truth. Stop repeating trash for the Rethugs to repeat. Yea! even the Dems think the same thing. Keep it up traitor! Some Dem you are. We really don't need people like you in the party...you do more harm than good and you're not going to educate anyone or change any minds. So stop the BS...would ya?!

That is.... instead of tiddlywinks.

has him confused with his old man. Based on just that alone this piece has absolutely no merit.

or do you want "mr nice guy can't we all get along"?

did everything in the book to win and that did not work out so I don't think it is a good criteria for picking a President.

based on polls. I want a commander in chief who doesn't waste lives and treasure for their own political expediency.

are playing it to the hilt...... Mr obama thought last night he would be facing the "little old lady from pasadena", but ran into "Raging Bull" and HRC handed him his ass a few times and I agree with the post by Emillereid
January 21, 2008, 6:55 pm
Bill Clinton’s Strategic Emotion
By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

"they are political animals to the core!"

to win.

I admire the Clintons. I disagree they always calculating etc.

They are two good politicians. Most people are who spend
over 5 years in politics. They just have different styles.
I view Politics as honorable. it is our we achieved a consitution
and a pretty good country.