There has been growing in this country for a long time, a concerted effort to marginalize the Clintons, to deny their value and contributions. Whether fuelled by moral righteousness, pure partisanship, mindless egotism, local politics, principled stand on issues of great import, or simple intra-party jockeying – all these motives and may be many more forces have been at play in this drama. Some of the forces working against the Clintons, especially Hillary, predate the Clinton presidency, some came up during her first attempt at health care reform, others sprang up during impeachment, still others are creatures of the cable show hosts out for ratings, or the internet - pure make believe, fabricated for effect.

This wave of anti-Clintonism was given great impetus, in my view, by a desire to re-write history. Not just that of presidency, but of this country. It is an attempt to deny that the Clintons ever served the country well. Another force at work, as I see it, is an attempt to place the post-9/11 world in  a ‘new frame’ so that the immediate past, once forgotten and glossed over, will pave the way for a future in which certain pre-selected powers could operate, the neocon world view. The trauma made amnesia possible. The amnesia made the rewrite feasible. This is no different from what happens in other societies, more totalitarian, more controlled in the public sphere. An attempt to always present the present as better, and to deny the goodness of the past. But such efforts all cave in under their own weight and glimmerings of truth will emerge. So too  will fail eventually, any attempt to distort the Clinton legacy, and hopes for a Clinton in the future.

There have been several ideas floated to dismiss Bill Clinton’s contributions. That it was the Republican congress that made Clintonomics possible, that the Fed Reserve and Greenspan were at the helm of the economy not Bill, that the world was falling apart while Bill indulged, and so on. Some of this was post-2000 partisan drivel.  But such silly arguments, oft repeated, were given credence by vested interests as GWB floundered and the country set adrift in post-Iraq sea of woe. Economic downturn was putting pressure on mythology to re-state something easy and obvious. What better way, politically than to deny previous successes, rather than accept current failure? It was against this background to deny Bill’s legacy, and the Clintons’ contribution, that seeds of Media War Against Hillary’s germinated and grew into an un-jolly, giant, green-with-envy and a bizarre hatred.

The more serious attempts to deny the legacy of Bill Clinton were fortified with the meme that Hillary represents somehow an attempt at Bill’s 3rd term. This is just a blatant attempt to not only tarnish Bill’s image in history, but it also completely downplays the individuality of Hillary.  Did anybody ever insist that GWB’s campaign versus Al Gore represented a ‘return to Bush?  Was Dubya ever termed a Bush 3rd term?  Far from it!  GWB was always accorded a separate position and status as politician, though he was as  much a beneficiary of his family connection as any person with dynastic clout. Ironically, and unwittingly perhaps,  a happenstance one might say, the very clever attempts to label GWB ‘Dubya’ and references to Bush 43 (versus Bush 41), and GWB as being from Texas (versus Bush 41 Kennebunkport), a contrast with Jeb Bush, comparisons between the two governors-Bush - all these psycho-exercises resulted in ‘the son’ being identified as being completely different, and totally separate from the ‘the father’ in a false analysis. This masked the lineage to the benefit of Dubya. Such benefit never accrued to the Clintons. They were held to be one and the same, no less due to the propaganda machinery allied with Obama. Hillary Clinton the Wife has not been allowed to separate from Bill Clinton the Husband. Bill and Hillary were always seen in tandem, in lock-step and in toto rarely as people apart. The Clintons were never imagined to be separate political forces, each valid, tenable, authentic and individuated in one’s own way, as the Bushes were from day one. Oh sure, they are all Bushes, but each a giant of a tree. But the poor Clintons, she is just a vine that wraps around the old tree trunk. An uglier example of society turning against its own benefactors has never been seen, the way people in different walks of life, egged on by all modalities of the media, diminished, denied and dissed Clintons since the late Nineties. It probably made a lot of people feel good about themselves.

Opinion continues …