Political arrogance from our presidents! or, Who’s the bigger boob?

It’s got the potential to be the ultimate loaded politically partisan question – who is the bigger nitwit these days; Bill Clinton, or Donald Trump?

TRUMP: Finds self 'not guilty'

Both men, it would appear, have something of a disconnect with the real world, what with the way they are trying to dismiss the criticisms they often get hit with from the public.

IN THE CASE of the incumbent president, Trump is attacking those people who want to see the special counsel Russia probe into his conduct take him down. Which isn’t the least bit surprising.

But Trump is tying this issue in with the concept of all the pardons he has talked about issuing, saying that if conditions really became dire for him, he could easily issue a pardon for himself.

“As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong.” Or so wrote Trump on his Twitter account (and people seriously wonder why I think of the president as the ‘Twit who Tweets’).

For it seems that our president truly thinks he can run the nation (and possibly, the world) in the same way he ran The Trump Organization – barking out orders and expecting minions to carry them out, unquestioned.

OF COURSE, BACK in those days, Trump was running a company that erected gaudy buildings and garish casinos – meaning Trump’s reckless behavior really didn’t impact anybody.

Now, Trump is in a position to do great harm – and he wants to have the right to wave away any moments when he chooses to cut through the red tape in inappropriate ways.

Hence, he thinks he can pardon himself. Even though one of his attorneys (former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani) himself publicly questioned whether Trump should think in terms of using such authority.

CLINTON: Tired of talking about Monica

Think of it this way. Former President Richard Nixon, who had to resign the presidency to avoid impeachment by Congress, had to count on his successor to grant him a pardon to avoid any conviction and incarceration – whom his biggest critics desperately wanted to see happen.

EVEN NIXON DIDN’T think he had a right to pardon himself to make his “Watergate” critics shut up. Even he realized that such an overbearing act would backfire ever so badly.

Think of the presidential clemency authority in these terms. How outraged would the people who are now Trump’s biggest backers have been if former President Bill Clinton had tried to avoid the whole impeachment debacle of 1998 by issuing himself a pre-emptive pardon.

Impeachment was definitely an ideologue act back then, and the people who pushed for his removal from office were doing so for the wrong reasons. But listening to Clinton now get upset when people bring up his behavior with a White House intern and compare it to actions of sexual harassment against other women sounds as ridiculously self-righteous as anything Trump has ever said.

“I dealt with it 20 years ago,” Clinton said during an interview with NBC and “The Today Show,” adding, “I’ve tried to do a good job since then, and with my life and with my work.”

PERSONALLY, I’VE ALWAYS thought that the appropriate judge for Clinton’s behavior back then was his wife. If Hillary had wanted to take it out on him publicly and ruin him, she should have been granted permission to do so.

NIXON: Pardoning self for Watergate?

The fact that she is able to get past this ought to be a sign for the rest of us. Except for those ideologues whose real hang-up is that Clinton ever got elected in the first place, and that they were unable to defeat him at the polling place.

Just as it kind of seems like Trump wants to erase the fact that some 3 million more people in this country wanted a Hillary Clinton presidency instead of him.

So does Bill Clinton owe an apology to Monica Lewinsky? Maybe! Although I’d say that Trump owes the nation a greater apology for his gaudy behavior that embarrasses the nation as a whole.

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Will anyone really read Fire and Fury?

I recall back some nearly two decades ago when Monica Lewinsky (as in the presidential intern) felt compelled to write a memoir of her experience, recalling how then-President Bill Clinton took advantage of her sexually.

Plummeted down the charts quickly

“Monica’s Story” went into detail about the man she later publicly called the “big creep.” It jumped immediately to the top spot on the “best seller’s” list of books.

BUT WHAT I recall is that the book released in March of 1999 quickly plummeted. It’s as though anybody who felt compelled to read it rushed out to buy a copy. I remember buying my copy of the book in a bookstore remainder bin about one month after it was released.

I think I paid $1.99 for it. I can’t remember the last time I saw a book plummet so promptly to the discount bin in a bookstore.

Quite a bargain, for that time. Although nowadays, someone going on Amazon.com can buy a used hardcover copy for $0.25. A brand-new paperback copy could be ordered as cheaply as $1.34.

What makes me remember this? It’s all the hoo-hah we’re getting over “Fire and Fury,” the recently-released book about the presidency thus far of Donald J. Trump.

THE ONE WHERE former strategist Steve Bannon questions the patriotism of Trump’s namesake son and also the intelligence level of the president himself.

Will Trump drop as quickly?

The one that has caused Trump to publicly announce that he’s “really smart” and “a stable genius.” Which is really pathetic to think our society is at a point where many of us seriously question the premise of such statements.

The one that also has Bannon himself now making statements to try to imply that regardless of what he actually said, he still has respect for Trump and his presidency. And Trump insisting that such a book is all the more evidence of the need for more stringent libel laws in this country – which is a very un-American concept, if you think about it.

The new Trump book is already being billed as a “best seller” by Amazon.com – marked down to $18 from its $30 cover price. But I question how quickly it will plummet in price to something along the lines of the Lewinsky book.

It's a wonder this children's book hasn't done better

I WONDER IF this will be one of those books most of us hear about, but never manage to find an excuse to buy – or even borrow.

Some of it will be the influence of the Trump-ites of society who will not want to believe anything that would indicate they cast ballots for a complete incompetent to be president back in 2016. But many of them don’t read much anyway – which is why they dismiss reports about how little the president himself has faith in the written word.

As for the majority of us, I’m sure we’ve already reached the conclusion that Trump is living proof that formal education (he constantly boasts of being schooled at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business) isn’t a guarantee of intelligence.

How many of us want to spend our hard-earned money on a book that merely confirms what we already know, and what we have seen several bits of evidence already.

OUR PRESIDENT IS a dolt. What we need to do is move on to figure out how to cope with the situation, rather than emphasize the man’s lack of intellectual curiosity about anything.

Working my way through this lengthy bio

For most of us, it’s going to mean having to accept the situation and learn from it come the elections to be held this year and in 2020.

I know I personally don’t feel compelled to buy this book – and yes, I do see the irony of writing some nearly 700 words about something I have no intention of ever reading. Let alone buying (Ms. Lewinsky was my sucker book purchase in life).

Which may be the biggest blow to the Trump ego – as much as he complains about the content of this book, he probably relishes in the idea that somebody thought his life was interesting enough to write about. And probably resents all the thousands of books (some 6,924, according to Amazon.com) that were written about Barack Obama.

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EXTRA: Shadow of blue dress mean-spirited, but hidden detail not unique

The quirky news story of the day on Monday consisted of the tale of the artist who painted the official portrait of former President Bill Clinton – it contains a shadow that the artist said was meant to represent the blue dress famously worn by White House intern/presidential mistress Monica Lewinsky.


A little hidden meaning of the shadow that supposedly hangs over the otherwise interesting tale of the Clinton administration, artist Nelson Shanks told the Philadelphia Daily News.


HE TOLD THE newspaper he deliberately put the shadow (which he says is supposed to be cast from a mannequin wearing the dress just outside of the painting’s view) because he wanted the “taint” of Lewinsky to be included in the portrait that is meant to illustrate Clinton forevermore.

Of course, he didn’t tell anybody about this intent at the time. It is only now, a decade after the portrait was completed and unveiled, that we get to learn this new, hidden meaning, which goes on top of the already-noted fact that Clinton was not depicted wearing his wedding ring in the portrait.

Which I’m presuming means that Shanks has long since been paid for his work, and it would next to impossible for the Clintons to put a stop order on the check. He gets away with this little tweak at the Clinton presidency.

That isn’t something I’m going to get too worked up over.

ALL POLITICAL PEOPLE like to try to have some hidden detail included in their official portraits – some hidden-meaning joke that only certain people get and that most people probably groan over when it is explained to them.

In Illinois, the official portrait of Gov. James R. Thompson depicts him wearing, amongst other things, an Elgin watch. He felt it necessary to include an Illinois-made product.

While former Gov. Jim Edgar is depicted standing in his office in front of a painting of the Lincoln/Douglas debate that took place in his home town of Charleston, Ill.

There also is a framed photograph depicted in the background – a headshot of his wife, Brenda. So we have a former Illinois first lady included in that official gubernatorial portrait by artist William T. Chambers.

BOTH OF THOSE portraits are on display at the Statehouse in Springfield, although there still is a vacancy for where the official Rod Blagojevich gubernatorial portrait should be. My guess is that serving time in federal prison in Colorado doesn’t leave him time to pose, and we may never get that view.

We’ll have to wait and see what portrait Pat Quinn comes up with, and what kind of hidden aspects of his life get included in such an oil painting.

It likely won’t be anything as nasty as what Clinton’s official portrait in the National Portrait Gallery gives us. After all, how many other artists describe their subjects as “the most famous liar of all time” as Shanks did to Clinton?

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Do we really want to relive Lewinsky? Along w/ impeachment nonsense it inspired? Just bring back the Bulls!

One of the reasons six years ago that I ultimately gave my political support (ie., my vote) to Barack Obama rather than Hillary Clinton was that I suspected any Clinton presidential candidacy would get bogged down in the muck of her husband.

All these years later, with Clinton supposedly the front-runner (as opposed to Vice President Joe Biden) for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, it seems like we’re going to have to relive the nonsense of ’98 regardless.

Do we also want to dance the Macarena?

 

THERE HAVE BEEN many other people who felt compelled to comment on the fact that Monica Lewinsky wrote an essay published in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine. She seems to believe she’s been unfairly singled out for abuse.

She might be right. It’s a shame that too many people in our society seem to be stuck with the mentality of a 13-year-old.

Because the tawdriness of that whole affair between a president and a flirtatious (and busty) intern isn’t something that is good for the nation to linger over.

Presidential kneepads. Thongs. Blue dresses with certain DNA-laced stains.

ANYBODY WHO THINKS back hard enough will come up with a tacky memory from each of those phrases. I could get even more garish if I chose to.

What amuses me the most about Lewinsky’s essay (it’s not that she can actually write readable copy) is that it is in an issue of Vanity Fair that seems loaded with copy meant to remind us of the 1990s.

A story about JFK, Jr. (remember “George” magazine?), and a piece trying to tell us the long-term significance of O.J. Simpson’s first criminal trial (the year-long affair that offended so many of the same people who were bothered by Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 and ’96).

All things that we’d be better off keeping in the past, if we knew what was good for us.

IF THERE’S ANYTHING significant that came out of the whole Clinton affair, it was the fact that it showed us how meaningless the “impeachment” label truly is.

Remember that Bill Clinton was impeached. I have no doubt that if the Senate does shift Republican following the Nov. 4 elections, they will try the same thing with the Barack Obama presidency.

They couldn’t beat him in 2008 or ’12, but are desperate to have something to hang on him so they can claim he was a complete and utter failure.

Real people won’t believe it. But then again, the ideologues have never cared what real people think. They want us to live in their world, and mind our lesser place in it.

I’VE BEEN HAVING these thoughts lately in part to brace myself for the possibility of impeachment proceedings (just as I spent my time right before Barack Obama actually became president in January 2009 re-reading as much as I could of the “Council Wars” days of old to brace myself for the likelihood of a Congress prepared to do nothing to deny the president any accomplishments).

I have no doubt that a Republican-controlled Congress would think nothing of applying the impeachment label again. I also doubt they could get the two-thirds of the Senate to go along with it (because there’s no way they’ll get a 67-percent GOP majority of Senate members).

All they succeeded in the former part, but wound up merely showing us just how meaningless the “impeachment” label truly is. Particularly if it seems the ideologues amongst us are going to want to use it against every single Democrat who has the nerve to get elected as president.

It seems the only way we can avoid the whole affair is to only elect presidents and government officials who appease the social conservative mentality of those people.

WHICH IS JUST something the real majority of our society just isn’t going to do. No more than we’d all start dancing the Macarena all over again.

Although the 1990s weren’t totally awful – unless you were a self-absorbed Los Angeles Lakers fan who had to see your team continually lose out to the Michael Jordan-era Bulls. That part of the decade would be worth reliving.

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