LAST MONTH I listed 40 reasons to make Bill Clinton a one-term president, and invited your suggestions for 40 more. Suggest you did, thousands of you, by e-mail, snail mail, fax, and phone. My thanks to all who wrote -- and especially to Rush Limbaugh, who generated amazing enthusiasm for this little civics project.
And now, as promised, Reasons 41 through 80 to send the Clintons packing:
41. A top private school for Chelsea, but no vouchers for poor kids who want the same break.
42. Clinton implied radio talk-show hosts were to blame for the terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City.
43. Vice President Al Gore on Russian President Boris Yeltsin, July 16, 1996: "To me, he looks good. On every score, President Yeltsin was actively engaged and seemed in very good shape." In fact, Yeltsin had just suffered a heart attack and remains gravely ill.
44. Ira Magaziner.
45. The candidate: "American politics is being held hostage by big money interests.. . . Cliques of $100,000 donors buy access to Congress and the White House." The president: Sold private White House dinners to donors who gave at least $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee -- plus "private impromptu meetings" with senior officials, a "personal DNC staff contact" to cut through federal red tape, and seats on foreign trade missions.
 There is no shortage of reasons to turn thumbs down on Bill Clinton. |
46. Deval Patrick, quota king.
47. The Clintons donate their used underwear to charity and deduct it on their tax returns.
48. But they never bothered to report their profits from Hillary's 1980 commodities trading -- until they were exposed in 1994.
49. When Chicago housewife Judy Mendoza told Clinton, "You suck," the White House had her arrested, fingerprinted, interrogated, and jailed.
50. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is 77 years old.
51. A historic first: The first lady is called before a grand jury.
52. Another historic first: White House reporters ask if the president has a sexually transmitted disease.
53. Why won't he release his medical records?
54. Number of White House aides with a history of serious drug abuse, according to the Secret Service: more than 40.
55. Cuba blows four unarmed Americans out of the sky, killing them in cold blood -- and Clinton does nothing to punish Fidel Castro.
56. And he doesn't do anything when Capt. Scott O'Grady is blown out of the sky by Bosnian Serbs.
57. Or when five Americans in Saudi Arabia are killed by a car bomb. Or when 19 more Americans are killed by a second bomb.
58. He does, however, shut down Pennsylvania Avenue.
59. Shameless exploitation I: "I have vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child." (No black churches were burned in Arkansas when Clinton was a child.)
60. Shameless exploitation II: Christopher Reeve in a wheelchair.
61. Shameless exploitation III: Vote for Al Gore because his sister died of lung cancer.
62. "Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I've hoed it. I've chopped it. I've shredded it, spiked it . . . sold it" -- Al Gore, campaigning in North Carolina in 1988.
63. Normalized relations with Vietnam, one of the planet's nastiest dictatorships.
64. In a "completely honest bureaucratic snafu," Clinton aides rifled the private FBI files of more than 900 Republican opponents.
65. Triangulation.
66. The huge 1993 Clinton tax increase not only hiked taxes, but did so retroactively.
67. The candidate: "Serbian aggression against Bosnia . . . must end. It is time for America . . . to exert strong leadership in putting a halt to the Serbian-led aggression." The president: "Let me tell you something about Bosnia.. . . The United Nations controls what happens in Bosnia."
68. Missing files. Shredded files. Stonewalled files. Carted-out-of-Vince-Foster's-office-in-the-dead-of-night files.
69. Turned a blind eye to the Russian slaughter in Chechnya.
70. Defamed Special Prosecutor Ken Starr.
71. In 50 years, Clinton has never had a private-sector job. It's time.
72. "If I were a single man, I might ask that mummy out. That's a good-looking mummy. . . . Really, you need to go see her" -- Clinton, on a 500-year-old Peruvian corpse.
73. Innocent Travel Office staffers were fired on Hillary's orders.
74. "I am the only president who knew something about agriculture when I got to the White House." And to hell with Presidents Carter, Truman, Jefferson, and Washington.
75. Vetoed the bipartisan bill to ban late-term, partial-birth abortions, which Daniel Patrick Moynihan calls "close to infanticide."
76. Even Third World dictators laugh at Warren Christopher.
77. Percentage of Americans who believe one or both Clintons have broken the law: 53.
78. They don't call him "Slick Willie" for nothing.
79. He wants more money for the National Endowment for the Arts.
80. National debt, 1992: $4 trillion. 1996: $5.2 trillion. Clinton increase: 30 percent. The era of big government marches on.
I know, I know -- I've left out plenty. But newsprint is expensive, and 80 reasons should be enough. Four more years? Only if we're gluttons for punishment.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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