Joe Klein Finds An Acorn (No, Not That One)
September 27th, 2009at 01:40pm Posted by Eli
Towards the end of his review of Taylor Branch’s “The Clinton Tapes”:
And that is the other great theme of this book: the struggle of a president mostly interested in policy against an opposition party obsessed with regaining power. The Republican efforts to undermine Clinton were rarely substantive and often unscrupulous. The president was impeached not because he committed anything resembling a high crime, but because the effort would cripple him at a moment when he might have gotten something accomplished — his popularity was running at 60 percent or so, the economy was booming. During the Clinton presidency, the Republicans accelerated their slide from a party of responsible conservatives to a party of antigovernment talk-show nihilists. Leaders like Bob Dole were intimidated by bomb-throwers like Newt Gingrich.
I wonder what it will take to bring the GOP back to reality, for it to take some scant interest in governing rather than simply pursuing power for the sake of power. If anything, they seem to be infecting Democrats with the same disease.
Entry Filed under: Media,Politics,Quotes,Republicans
