Alienation and Bill Clinton

I have been very troubled this past week about Bill Clinton's new role in the presidential campaign. At least I'm seeing that I'm not alone. There have been a number of articles about this, and the Clintons are apparently realizing that they are alienating a large number of Democrats. One thread, the dominant thread I'm afraid, has been to point out how Clinton has alienated black voters. But it's not just black voters. It's Barack Obama supporters in general, and that includes me.

An interesting twist on this story appears in today's op ed from E.J. Dionne. One of the things Clinton has attacked Obama for is Obama's remarks that Reagan has had a long-lasting impact on American politics, and that the Republicans of that era were the party of new ideas. It's true enough to begin with. But more than that, Dionne writes:

It was a remarkable moment: A young, free-thinking presidential hopeful named Bill Clinton sat down with reporters and editors at The Post in October 1991 and started saying things most Democrats wouldn't allow to pass their lips.

Ronald Reagan, Clinton said, deserved credit for winning the Cold War. He praised Reagan's "rhetoric in defense of freedom" and his role in "advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back."

"The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing," Clinton declared.

Clinton was careful to add that the Reagan military program included "a lot of wasted money and unnecessary expenditure," but the signal had been sent: Clinton was willing to move beyond "the brain-dead politics in both parties," as he so often put it.

His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton a few days later for daring to "set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan." Clinton's "readiness to defy his party's prevailing Reaganphobia . . .," the paper wrote, "is one reason he's a candidate to watch."

Dionne goes on to note that the great thing about Bill Clinton was his willingness to bridge the gap between Democrats and Republicans and to embrace innovative thinking. And he notes the irony that Barack Obama is following Clinton's example with his middle-of-the-road approach.

The worst thing about all this is what both Clintons are doing to their own legacy as pioneers of an approach that rejected, as Bill Clinton said in a 1991 speech, "the stale orthodoxies of left and right." The great asset shared by the Clintons is their willingness to bring fresh thinking to old problems.

All I can say is that as much as I've supported Bill Clinton in the past, this approach of his playing the role of a vice-presidential-like 'attack dog' for his wife Hillary has completely rubbed me the wrong way. Obama is right that they are running a dirty-tricks campaign. And if they keep it up, I and many others will be so alienated that we'll actually do the unthinkable and consider the Republican candidates if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination.