Tag: man of the world
Uh Oh! A Clinton Book That Ignores The ‘Clinton Rules’

Uh Oh! A Clinton Book That Ignores The ‘Clinton Rules’

Any way you look at it, Bill and Hillary Clinton are among the incomprehensible wonders of the political world. Reading my friend and former co-author Joe Conason’s new book Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton,  one thought recurred: Is it even possible to grasp the essence of this brilliant, mercurial, many-sided man, and his equally enigmatic and deeply ambitious wife—much less to fully comprehend their passionate alliance?

Maybe not. Indeed, reading a peevish, small-minded Washington Post review of Conason’s book by one Carla Anne Robbins, I wondered if the journalistic phenomenon I call “The Clinton Rules” isn’t mainly a defensive reaction.

See, if the former president of the United States, aged 70, can devote his time between heart surgeries to exhausting tours of remote African villages checking on the Clinton Health Access Initiative’ progress in saving millions of children from the ravages of HIV/AIDS, then what’s your excuse?

Far better to maintain your moral superiority with sniffish references to Monica Lewinsky, Hillary’s accursed e-mails, and as Robbins oddly observes, “Bill Clinton’s chummy relations with billionaire philanthropists who may or may not be special pleaders.”

Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Apparently, writing comprehensible prose isn’t among the requirements for serving as a member of the New York Times editorial board, as Robbins did between 2006 and 2012. Which may explain quite a lot, actually.

Robbins further complains that “at a time when the Clinton Foundation’s many good works are dismissed as merely pay to play, Conason’s hagiography won’t correct the record.”

A hagiography, of course, is a saint’s life. The insinuation is that because Conason clearly admires Bill Clinton’s philanthropy, he worships the man and is incapable of criticism. This allows Robbins to pretend that such balanced criticisms as Conason does offer constitute unalloyed praise.

Concerning Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees, for example, Conason writes that like her husband, “she felt such confidence in her own probity that she was unable to imagine how others might view her acceptance of enormous sums of money from special interests.”

Now a native speaker of English would grasp that the author is describing a failure of imagination. Subsequently, Conason describes Hillary’s “failure to comprehend” how working families might react to such “buck-raking,” and how her seeming smugness has hurt her politically.

Mother Theresa, she’s not.

In keeping with her own muddled theme, however, Robbins depicts this as slavish devotion. Elsewhere, Conason tartly observes that regardless of a failed last minute Bill Clinton/Tony Blair diplomatic effort to prevent the Iraq war, Hillary’s favorable vote left her to bear “a substantial share of blame for its catastrophic consequences.”

To the Post reviewer, this too sounds like praise.

But then the author’s own ambivalence renders her judgement incoherent throughout. Yes, she writes, “it would be tragic if the Clinton Foundation’s programs were ended.”

Indeed, it would be.She adds that for all of the couple’s “more dubious actions…. there is no proof of wrongdoing by either of the Clintons.”

No, there’s not. What’s more, from the New York Times/Washington Post-sponsored Whitewater hoax onward, there never has been. One heavy-breathing, poorly-written “scandal” narrative after another, cobbled together in right-wing opposition research shops and spoon fed to the news media’s deepest thinkers, have basically come to nothing.

And it galls the hell out of them.

Jonathan Allen recently spilled the beans in Vox: “The Clinton rules are driven by reporters’ and editors’ desire to score the ultimate prize in contemporary journalism: the scoop that brings down Hillary Clinton and her family’s political empire.”

Simply by writing a fascinating narrative implicitly from the Clintons’ perspective, then, Conason must be dismissed as a sycophant, if not a heretic. Mimicking journalistic critics of the Clinton Global Initiative, Bill Clinton described to the author how such criticism invariably works:

“Yeah, it’s a good thing, yeah, it’s gonna help a lot, yeah, it’s gonna do a lot of good for a lot of people, it’s going to save a lot of lives—but he probably still shouldn’t have done it because he just wanted publicity…

“I could get lots of publicity if I just sat right out on the street.”

Indeed, he could. However, Bill Clinton’s compassion and moral imagination are every bit as deep as his fathomless need for attention. Did globe-trotting with Mick Jagger, Bono and Nelson Mandela make Bill Clinton feel like the King of the World? No doubt. But impoverished, HIV-afflicted children all over the world are alive because of that need.

Hillary’s too.

One of the best things in Conason’s book is a long, witty description by former President George H.W. Bush of accompanying Bill Clinton across Asia on a fund-raising mission for Tsunami relief.

“You cannot get mad at the guy,” Bush concluded. “I admit to wondering why he can’t stay on time, but when I see him interacting with folks, my wonder turns to understanding.”

Editor’s note: We publish Gene Lyons’ column this week at the risk of appearing self-indulgent (and not without a blush of embarrassment). But were we to withhold Gene’s wisdom his devoted fans surely would protest.  

Morning Joe: Why Scarborough Is So Angry (And So Wrong) About Algeria

Morning Joe: Why Scarborough Is So Angry (And So Wrong) About Algeria

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were kind enough to host a discussion of my new book, Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton. But as the discussion got a bit hot, among the subjects that came up was Joe’s “inventive” theory about the Algerian government’s donation to Haitian relief via the Clinton Foundation in 2010, which he elaborated during the publicity rollout for Peter Schweizer’s book, Clinton Cash. After I departed the set this morning, Scarborough continued to vent his displeasure with me. The following excerpt from pages 435-426 may suggest why he was so irritated that he would attack me when I was no longer present to defend myself and my work — and it certainly shows why his verbal indictment of the  Clinton Foundation was so wrong:

Journalists who had paid only fleeting attention to the foundation’s work over more than a decade proclaimed their concern about its finances, transparency, and efficiency.

Commentators with very little knowledge of any of the foundation’s programs, still unable to distinguish the Clinton Global Initiative from the Clinton Health Access Initiative, confidently denounced the entire operation as dubious. Others glancingly recognized the good achieved by the foundation before moving on to denounce the Clintons’ “greed.” And media stars who had eagerly participated in Clinton Global Initiative events, broadcasting gushy interviews with Bill Clinton, suddenly voiced angry suspicions, unproven accusations, and inventive theories.

On April 27, for example, Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, held forth about a 2010 donation to the Clinton Foundation from the government of Algeria, which had been earmarked for Haiti relief. That donation mistakenly went unreported as a pass- through, because it never accrued to the foundation balance sheet.

But to Scarborough, who had conducted a very friendly interview with Clinton from a set at CGI in September 2010, the Algerian money smacked of corruption. He had a theory, too: Algeria’s government wanted to be taken off the State Department’s list of nations that support terrorism.

“I think it was Algeria, maybe, that had given a donation that went unreported at a time when they wanted to be taken off of the terror list in the State Department,” he mused. “They write the check, they get taken off the terror list. . . . At the same time, and then it goes un- reported by the Clinton Foundation. . . . Is there a quid pro quo there? I don’t know, that’s really hard to tell.” Scarborough continued in that vein for several minutes.

The facts were considerably less exciting. Algeria had never been on the State Department’s terror list, which only included four nations; in fact, the Algerian government routinely fought terrorists within its borders and had long been a valued ally of the United States against terrorist organizations operating in North Africa.

Not at all chastened by this blunder, however, Scarborough continued to savage the Clintons the following morning when he interviewed Peter Schweizer. Having once represented a Florida congressional district, Scarborough compared the Clintons unfavorably to several former congressional colleagues and a recent governor of Virginia who all had been convicted of bribery. The proven criminal behavior of the elected officials, he insisted, “pales in comparison to [what is in] this book.”

Much of the most damning material in Clinton Cash, however, turned out to be either factually inaccurate, melodramatically exaggerated, or both. Within weeks after publication, major media outlets reported significant errors discovered in its pages.

From ‘Man Of The World’: Steve Bannon’s Nonprofiteering

From ‘Man Of The World’: Steve Bannon’s Nonprofiteering

Before Donald Trump appointed Stephen K. Bannon as his presidential campaign’s “CEO’ this week, he was known in media and political circles as the abrasive chief of Breitbart.com — the right-wing website that increasingly reflects white nationalist ideology.

Over the past few several years, however, Bannon has also chaired a shadowy nonprofit group in Tallahassee, Florida called the “Government Accountability Institute.” Its president is Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash, the 2015 HarperCollins bestseller that purported to reveal corruption and self-dealing at the Clinton Foundation. Found to contain many errors and distortions, the book was described in mainstream news outlets as “widely discredited” by the time Trump cited it in a speech attacking the Clintons last spring.

My forthcoming book, Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton, examines the background of the GAI and its promotion of Clinton Cash. A close look at Bannon, Schweizer, and the GAI reveals that their complaints about the Clinton Foundation represent a textbook example of what psychologists call “projection” — that is, attributing their own questionable behavior and motives to someone else, such as a political adversary.

Exactly how questionable is difficult to tell since, unlike the Clinton Foundation, Bannon and Schweizer have failed to disclose the GAI’s tax forms or other pertinent information from 2015. What follows is excerpted from Man of the World:

When the Government Accountability Institute first appeared on the scene during the 2012 election cycle, the new “nonpartisan” entity almost immediately launched a series of harsh attacks on President Obama that were later determined to be inaccurate by the Washington Post fact-checkers. Eventually, researchers uncovered at least one important source of the money behind the “institute”—an eccentric right-wing hedge-fund executive named Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, based in New York, whose family foundation had given millions of dollars to Schweizer in 2013 and 2014.

The extent of Mercer’s specific support for Clinton Cash is not known, although it seems to have been the main project of GAI during that period. But when HarperCollins editor Adam Bellow, a friend of Schweizer, brought in the book, Schweizer alerted the publisher that GAI’s wealthy supporters were prepared to spend big to promote the book. Without seeking approval from HarperCollins for ads or media outlets, the GAI ran its own Clinton Cash publicity campaign.

The GAI has yet to release its 990 IRS form for 2015, so any specific expenditures on advertising for Clinton Cash remain secret. So does the disposition of the book’s advance and royalties. If Schweizer spent his nonprofit’s money promoting a book whose proceeds accrued to him personally, that would appear to represent precisely the kind of self-dealing for which he had indicted the Clintons. In 2013, the organization disclosed spending more than $100,000 for advertising on the Breitbart website—a company that happened to be chaired by Stephen Bannon, who also chairs the GAI board.

Yes, Bannon spent his nonprofit’s tax-exempt funding to support the profitable media company that he chairs. No wonder Trump likes him so much.