Carl Bernstein unwittingly reveals that he believes Trump is innocent of whatever it is that Mueller is investigating.

I was stunned by this amazing slip this morning on CNN's "State of the Union." The moderator Dana Bash had this question:WOODWARD: You have to look at the crimes.

[T]he investigation has been going on for over a year, at least in the Justice Department, the FBI. We still don't know about any evidence that the president knowingly colluded with Russia. Does that give the president's claim that this is a witch-hunt some credence?

Bernstein's answer:

He believes it's a witch-hunt. There's no question he believes it's a witch-hunt.

What?! The only way that Bernstein can make those assertions about what Trump believes is if Bernstein is sure Trump is not lying. Trump knows what he did with respect to Russia, but he's saying it's a witch-hunt. Trump's saying that it's a witch-hunt could happen if: 1. He knows there's nothing there (i.e., Mueller is searching for for something, like a witch, that doesn't exist), or 2. He's worried about something that he did and he wants to hide it. Bernstein's remark excludes #2. But Bernstein doesn't have access to the inside of Trump's head, so why did Bernstein say that? I'd say Bernstein, on his own, knows that there's nothing there, and he blurted out an answer without thinking about what he was saying about what's in his own head.

I know: It's also possible that Bernstein is a careless bullshitter.

ADDED: Here's how the CNN website covers the same appearance I am writing about: "Bernstein: Trump's lawyers tell him what he wants to hear on Russia." CNN's writers tell audience what they want to hear about Trump.

The idea that Hillary Clinton's relationship with honesty has "to do with the history of Bill Clinton and women in which she's had to defend him."

Carl Bernstein — who, among other things, wrote a biography of Hillary Clinton — had this to say about the interview Hillary gave to CNN. Hillary, as we were discussing earlier today, was unforthcoming when asked why so few Americans think she's honest and trustworthy.

First of all, we have to look at what politicians do generally in terms of fudging. It's endemic in the profession. But she has become a kind of specialist at it. Why has she become a kind of specialist? It has to do I think with the peculiarity of the Clinton situation. It had partly to do with the history of Bill Clinton and women in which she's had to defend him. It's been very difficult to do with the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

In the interview, CNN's Brianna Keilar asked Hillary 3 times to explain why people think she's dishonest and untrustworthy. Hillary's only semblance of an answer was an assertion that she could win the election because voters will know she will fight for us and be there when we need her. See how that clicks with Bernstein's theory? She fought for her husband. She was there for him. She did what he needed, and that wasn't about truthfulness. In this light, Hillary's answer to Keilar's question becomes more apt. It could be paraphrased: People should want a President who's all in, fighting for them, and I'm that kind of fighter, on task and determined, not swayed by fussiness about truthtelling.

And I suspect that when she talks this over with her advisers, a central idea is: Politicians are dishonest. Everyone knows that and everyone thinks that. It's trifling that it shows up in a poll that people think Hillary is dishonest. It's like a poll showing people think the sky is blue. The important thing is, people are familiar and at home with Hillary's dishonesty. It's a comfortable old friend. We know all about it. It's acquired a transparency of its own. But what is the dishonesty of all those other candidates? That is the mystery. That is what people should worry about — all the strange ways in which Jeb/Marco/Scott/Rand/Ted/etc. are dishonesty. So confusing and disturbing. Who knows how to begin to delve into that swamp? Best to stay with good old dishonest Hillary!

She can't come out and say that, but that's the secret hidden message, I'm guessing. 

"Do you wonder why people are so mixed up when the bimbos the TV stations send out don’t even know what the bill does?"

Said Mark Belling on the radio, using a word that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Daniel Bice questions:

OK, "bimbo" is a little dated. Still, should Belling be using that term to deride female TV journalists? What's his term du jour for their incompetent male counterparts?

When I hear "bimbo," I think of "bimbo eruptions," a term coined by Governor Bill Clinton's chief of staff Betsey Ross Wright:

As deputy chair of the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign, Wright established the rapid response system that was responsible for defending Clinton's record in Arkansas and promptly answering all personal attacks on the candidate. During the 1992 campaign, Wright coined the term "bimbo eruptions" to describe rumors alleging extramarital affairs by Clinton. 

How sexual is the term "bimbo"? Can it just mean idiot or does Belling seem to be insinuating that the reporter is slutty?

By the way, "bimbo" originally referred to a male, as the "o" ending suggests. (It means "baby" in the original Italian.) The oldest English usage is for "A fellow, chap; usu. contemptuous." That goes back to 1919, with the female meaning arriving a decade later: "A woman; esp. a whore." That's from the (unlinkable) OED, which has a draft addition from 2004: "derogatory. A young woman considered to be sexually attractive but of limited intelligence. (Now the usual sense.)" The OED quotes a Woody Allen story from 1976, "The Whore of Mensa":

"I'm on the road a lot. You know how it is - lonely. Oh, not what you're thinking. See, Kaiser, I'm basically an intellectual. Sure, a guy can meet all the bimbos he wants. But the really brainy women - they're not so easy to find on short notice."

ADDED: I searched for "bimbo" in Carl Bernstein's book about Hillary "A Woman in Charge," and I found this quote from "one of her aides":

She doesn’t look at her life as a series of crises but rather a series of battles. I think of her viewing herself in more heroic terms, an epic character like in The Iliad, fighting battle after battle. Yes, she succumbs to victimization sometimes, in that when the truth becomes too painful, when she is faced with with the repercussions of her own mistakes or flaws, she falls into victimhood. But that’s a last resort and when she does allow the wallowing it’s only in the warm glow of martyrdom—as a laudable victim—a martyr in the tradition of Joan of Arc, a martyr in the religious sense. She would much rather play the woman warrior—whether it’s against the bimbos, the press, the other party, the other candidate, the right-wing. She’s happiest when she’s fighting, when she has identified the enemy and goes into attack mode…. That’s what she thrives on more than anything—the battle.

"Who's the Republican Hillary Clinton should want to face — Bush or Walker — if she had to pick between those two?"

Chuck Todd asked David Axelrod on yesterday's "Meet the Press" (which I have to transcribe myself from the video, at about 24:20). A good question, but Axelrod said:

"The thing about Walker is we haven't seen him yet. We don't know how he's going to deal with the pressures of running for President. I've been through this a few times and the bar gets raised every time and whether it clears those bars is a big question. I don't know yet. I think Bush would be a very tough candidate for him... for her."

LOL on the "him... her." But Axelrod is coasting. This was a perfunctory repeat of what he'd said in an that I blogged last Wednesday. There, he said:

"So he goes to Iowa and gives a good speech to a few hundred activists…and he’s the flavor of the month.... Presidential politics is like pole vaulting. Everyone can clear the early bar. But then the bar gets raised. And the reality is, how do you handle it when it gets really, really rough, when you’re under constant scrutiny, when everything you say becomes an issue?"

I scoffed at the pole vaulting analogy the first time. And, of course, I kicked him for seeming not to know that Walker has already showed us how he "handles it when it gets really, really rough."

On "Meet the Press," Joe Scarborough picked up the slack: "We saw Rand Paul stumbling early. Scott Walker has been through 3 tough fights in a really blue state in 4 years."

Todd got very excited at that point and said: "It's not about the stumble... it's how you recover, and the guy who knows how to recover best will probably end up with the nomination."

I don't feel we got any good discussion of the great question that used for this post heading. One thing I've been thinking about is that if Hillary Clinton faces Scott Walker, we'll need to dig into the story of her struggles with the teachers union in Arkansas back when Bill Clinton was governor in the 1980s. Scott Walker may be known for his standing up to the public employee unions back in 2011, but Hillary's first big political success came in the form of standing up to the teachers union. The issue will devolve into which way a governor should stand up to the entrenched interests of the public unions. Hillary's approach got her and Bill accused of racism. Remember that?

From Carl Bernstein's "A Woman in Charge":

[A]t Hillary’s urging... education was made the signature issue of his administration. Hillary would coordinate a great effort at reform....

The day before Hillary’s plan was announced publicly, Bill told the head of the Arkansas Education Association that teacher-testing would be part of the reform package. The official was, predictably, furious.... [Hillary] was sure that testing teachers’ competence and holding them to minimum standards would help the schools educate. Frequently Hillary and Bill would talk about one teacher who, reading from a textbook, reportedly referred to World War II as “World War Eleven.”...

Bill, in presenting his budget plan to a special session of the legislature, called mandatory teacher tests “a small price to pay for the biggest tax increase for education in the history of the state and to restore the teaching profession to the position of public esteem that I think it deserves.” The teachers called it an outrage, racist. They accused the Clintons of calling the entire teaching profession incompetent. Civil rights organizations condemned the testing provision.

It genuinely pained Hillary and Bill that they were accused of appealing to racist sensibilities, just as they would be attacked for “playing the race card” to achieve welfare reform a decade and a half later. But it was also true that if a specific group of individuals were to suffer disproportionately in the process of reform it would be black teachers (and later black welfare recipients).

The union pursued its case in court—Hillary’s task force and the state were the defendants—for eight years. Most of the teachers’ wrath was trained on Hillary. Diane Blair remembered “walking through a crowd with her at a school, and you could hear teachers hissing at her. She just shook her head and said, ‘I get this all over the state. It’s heartbreaking. It’s hard. But someday they’ll understand.’” In fact, Hillary didn’t seem to mind too much. At times she wore the teachers’ enmity as a badge of honor, and for almost a decade used the example of their villainy as a basic component of the Permanent Campaign in Arkansas.

"We know a lot about President Obama, and I think the idea that he would want the IRS used for retribution — we have no evidence of any such thing."

Says Carl Bernstein, declaring that the Obama administration's IRS scandal is not Watergate. 

"In the Nixon White House, we heard the president of the United States on tape saying 'Use the IRS to get back on our enemies."

The link goes to Politico, which doesn't close the quotation marks around "Use the IRS to get back on our enemies," and doesn't link to specific Nixon quotes found on the Watergate tapes. It's strange to put quotes around that if it's not a quote. Here's the Wikipedia article "Nixon's Enemies List," which doesn't quote any Nixon remarks. It does have the truly shocking John Dean memo that asks "how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." Politico needs to close the quotation marks and link to the quote or take away the quotes and add some material about how Nixon never said that and perhaps Bernstein — the wheeled-out old authority on Watergate — meant to say John Dean when he said Nixon.

Now, as to we have any evidence that Obama would want the IRS used for retribution, Obama once joked about using the machinery of the IRS against his enemies:

At his Arizona State University commencement speech [in May 2009], Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU's point by remarking, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."

"I kid you not: The IRS just released a statement on its improper harassment of conservative groups in the run-up to the 2012 election including the words: 'mistakes were made.'"

Says Instapundit, under the heading "It just gets worse."

I see that "Mistakes were made" has its own Wikipedia page:

The New York Times has called the phrase a "classic Washington linguistic construct." Political consultant William Schneider suggested that this usage be referred to as the "past exonerative" tense, and commentator William Safire has defined the phrase as "[a] passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it." While perhaps most famous in politics, the phrase has also been used in business, sports, and entertainment.

The phrase is most associated with Richard Nixon and his press secretary Ron Ziegler:

U.S. President Richard Nixon used the phrase several times in reference to wrongdoings by his own electoral organization and presidential administration.

On May 1, 1973, White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler stated "I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein" (referring to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post). He continued, "We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was overenthusiastic in my comments about the Post, particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place." The previous day, White House counsel John Dean and Nixon aides John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman had resigned, as the Watergate scandal progressed.

But it's not as though the association with Nixon has worked over the years to warn off other politicians. As you can see at the Wikipedia page, President Reagan used it in 1987 (about Iran-Contra, President Clinton used it in 1997 (about Democratic Party fundraising scandals. Senator McCain used it in 2005 (about the Iraq war). There are more items on the list, including — I love Wikipedia —today's statement by the IRS.

Under the "see also" heading:

List of political catch phrases
Non-apology apology
Non-denial denial
Spin (public relations)

IN THE COMMENTS: Erich said: "Calls to mind the classic Matt Groening cartoon."

"Obama, weaving around life’s potential barriers smoothly and largely alone, came to regard himself as not only lucky..."

"... but destined, a sensibility that could lead to overconfidence, if not hubris," writes David Maraniss, analyzing the cause and extent of Obama's problem debating Romney. Maraniss — who wrote a book about Obama — sees Obama as a man of contradictions, who "chose politics as his profession while harboring ambivalence about it."

He has played by the conventional rules yet at times betrays a disdain for the game, whether mocking the notion of sound bites or chastising the media for being slaves to a 24-hour news cycle while he thinks in the long term. 

This is in contrast to Bill Clinton, who "could immerse himself in the moment and excel at transactional politics."

Obama is more the participant-observer, self-consciously taking note of the surreal aspects of what he is doing. Clinton’s antennae were tuned to his surroundings; Obama’s are tuned to his interior being. Clinton, a brilliantly authentic phony, could assume any role the circumstances required. Obama yearns to play roles he admires. In the first debate, he was the constitutional law professor, listening, giving ground, offering complex caveats, soberly taking notes. None of that helped him.

Maybe a lawprof is not what you want in a politician. And yet, Bill Clinton was a lawprof. So was Hillary Clinton. And there are different types of lawprofs. They don't all listen, give ground, and offer complex caveats! Here's an old blog post of mine about how different Bill and Hillary were as law professors, with these quotes from Carl Bernstein's book about Hillary):

Hillary's style was confident, aggressive, take-charge, and much more structured than Bill's. "All business," a colleague said. Her questions to students were tough and demanding. Bill almost never put his students on the spot; rather, he maintained an easy dialogue with them. His conversational approach often gave students the run of the class, and he let them filibuster.

"If you were unprepared, she would rip you pretty good, but not in an unfair way," recalled Woody Bassett, who became good friends of both, and worked in many Clinton political campaigns. "She made you think. She challenged you. If she asked you a question about a case and you gave an answer, well then — here comes another question. Whereas in Bill Clinton's classes, it was much more laid-back." In class Hillary never mentioned her work on the impeachment inquiry."...

Bill was far more open about discussing political issues with his students, whether Nixon's impeachment or Roe v. Wade, on which he spent several weeks. The subject of his constitutional law course more naturally lent itself to political questions than Hillary's.

She taught — would you guess? — criminal law, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy.

He was regarded as the easiest grader in the law school. Hillary's exams were tough, and her grading commensurate with what she expected law students to know. There was little doubt that she was the better teacher, possessed with "unusual ability to absorb a huge amount of facts and boil them down to the bottom line," Bassett thought. Clinton was more likely to go at a subject in a circular way, looking at it from every angle and sometimes never coming to a conclusion. But usually his was the more interesting class, because of the passion and knowledge with which he addressed legal questions related to everyday events.

Neither of them seemed to be the Maraniss's lawprof stereotype: "listening, giving ground, offering complex caveats, soberly taking notes."

Goodbye to Nora Ephron.

She was 71.

In the late 1960s Ms. Ephron turned to magazine journalism, at Esquire and New York mostly. She quickly made a name for herself by writing frank, funny personal essays — about the smallness of her breasts, for example — and tart, sharply observed profiles of people like Ayn Rand, Helen Gurley Brown and the composer and best-selling poet Rod McKuen. Some of these articles were controversial. In one, she criticized Betty Friedan for conducting a “thoroughly irrational” feud with Gloria Steinem; in another, she discharged a withering assessment of Women’s Wear Daily....

Her first screenplay, written with her friend Alice Arlen, was for “Silkwood,” a 1983 film based on the life of Karen Silkwood, who died under suspicious circumstances while investigating abuses at a plutonium plant where she had worked...

Ms. Ephron followed “Silkwood” three years later with a screenplay adaptation of her own novel “Heartburn,” which was also directed by Mr. Nichols. But it was her script for “When Harry Met Sally,” which became a hit Rob Reiner movie in 1989 starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, that established Ms. Ephron’s gift for romantic comedy...

[She wrote] “Sleepless in Seattle” (she shared the screenwriting credits), which brought Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan together so winningly that they were cast again in “You’ve Got Mail.”

A woman of our time. It's sad to lose her. I wish the obit (in the NYT) had a bunch of links to old magazine articles and to movie clips. The article about Ayn Rand is in "Wallflower at the Orgy." There's also: "Scribble Scrabble," "Crazy Salad," "I Feel Bad About My Neck," and "Heartburn," which is the one about the breakup of her marriage to Carl Bernstein, which was made into a movie with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. Here's a little clip of the 2 greatest actors of our time enacting the scenes of Ms. Ephron's marriage:



Let's sing all of the songs we know about babies....

ADDED: I just downloaded "Wallflower at the Orgy" to get the Ayn Rand essay, which begins:

Twenty-five years ago, Howard Roark laughed. Standing naked at the edge of a cliff, his face gaunt, his hair the color of bright orange rind, his body a composition of straight, clean lines and angles, each curve breaking into smooth, clean planes, Howard Roark laughed. It was probably a soundless laugh; most of Ayn Rand’s heroes laugh soundlessly, particularly while making love. It was probably a laugh with head thrown back; most of Ayn Rand’s heroes do things with their heads thrown back, particularly while dealing with the rest of mankind. It was probably a laugh that had a strange kind of simplicity; most of Ayn Rand’s heroes act with a strange kind of simplicity, particularly when what they are doing is of a complex nature.

Beautiful! Twenty-five years ago... that was was written in 1968.... 69 years ago...

Monsters and demons.

I've been reading Carl Bernstein's book about Hillary Clinton, "A Woman In Charge," and I was struck by the way she talked to members of Congress about her health care plan:

Mrs. Clinton “tended to view anyone who criticized her plan, even constructively, as an enemy,” Mr. Bernstein writes, adding that much to the dismay of Senators Bill Bradley and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, she advised Congressional Democrats that “the time had come to ‘demonize’ those who would slow down the health care train for some important roadwork.”

These days, her campaign people acted scandalized when Obama advisor Samantha Power called her a monster. I wonder what is worse — expressing the opinion that someone is a monster or exercising power by threatening to cause the public to think that you are a demon. Demons are worse than monsters, it seems, but that's the least notable difference.

Why I'm voting for Obama in the Wisconsin primary.

I said I was going to write this post, so I'd better do it. As I said, I want to do an archaeology of the archive and trace my response to Barack Obama as I did to John Kerry in an old 2004 post called "How Kerry lost me." I've already said that Obama made a good impression on me when I first encountered him (when he spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention), but that I condemned all the Democrats who voted against John Roberts (and that included Obama).

Let's continue. This will have to be very selective, because there are over 200 posts tagged "Obama," and a blog post can't be too long.

On December 11, 2006, I quoted Obama saying: "I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit...." I liked him for saying that. It was honest. I thought he'd have become something specific, and I'm amused to see that I added: "Wouldn't it be funny if he didn't?"

By April 2006, I was sick of hearing people marvel at what a good speaker he was and called him a "gasbag":

I hear a tired-sounding man, who rambles on and on.... [I]f I didn't know who he was and that there was a crowd there, I would picture an old man slumped in an armchair, expatiating for the benefit of anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot. It's formless stream of consciousness. Oh, there is that theme of hope. The stream swirls back there at predictable intervals.

By July 25, 2007, I was saying that it had become clear that Hillary Clinton was the best Democratic candidate. That was right after the debate where Obama answered "I would" to the question: "[W]ould you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?"

In the beginning of August, I was annoyed by Andrew Sullivan's effusive support of Obama as the candidate who would rid the young of the older "traumatized" generation:

This isn't an argument that Obama would make a better President than Clinton, but it's not a mere outburst of emotion either. He's saying that Obama will make a better candidate than Clinton, because he will -- by his faith -- inspire belief. That sounds rather dangerous, evocative of the worst things that can happen in politics. We need analysis and reason too, and I think Obama can only go so far exciting people with "the audacity of hope." The debate the other night showed how he can fall short, going for the hopeful, inspiring idea when Clinton comes forward with the more seasoned, mature, realistic analysis.

And which approach, in fact, betrays more fear that Americans are "know-nothing" "rubes"? I think the simplistic talk of hope, playing on the emotions of the listener, shows less respect for the intelligence and sophistication of the voters than a more complex, realistic presentation of the issues.

So I was leaning strongly toward Hillary last summer. But I wasn't agonizing over the Democratic race. I favored Rudy Giuliani.

In November, I was traipsing around San Francisco, and I just happened to stop to take a photo of a photo of Obama in the window of a hat shop. The proprietor, an older black woman, came out and engaged me in conversation:

[S]he wanted to talk about Barack Obama. Do I like him? Yes! I think he's a good man, and that he would be able to do a lot of good. I added, "But I kind of like Giuliani." That was okay with her, it seemed — so long as I don't like Hillary.

Of course, I didn't like Hillary. Anyone who reads this blog knows that. But I still could easily picture myself voting for her. I don't like politicians and I don't need to like them. I just try to pick someone who can do the job well enough. I keep my distance.

Then I commented on a story about Michelle Obama, who was asked why there isn't more support for her husband among black voters. She said: "What we're dealing with in the black community is just the natural fear of possibility... I think that it's one of the legacies of racism and discrimination and oppression."

Obama just seemed bland to me around this time, and I was needling him to attack.

Then came Oprah Winfrey:

[S]he presents Obama as an embodiment of our political, religious, and psychological needs. I'm saying "our," even though the presentation is strongly aimed at black people, because I don't lose the sense that she is speaking to the country as a whole....

She tells us some people think that Barack Obama ought to wait. She equates that with the old message that black people ought to have waited for equality. In this rhetoric, to tell him he should wait feels racist. But Oprah never accuses anyone of racism. She never even mentions the name of the rival who wants us to think that she is ahead of him in line. Oprah keeps the positive message in front. This is inspirational. Barack Obama is The One, so allow him to emerge into his rightful place, and we will all be fulfilled, saved... and — why not? — well governed.

Did Oprah get to me?!

I think I was hanging back, observing, commenting, but also slowly bonding with Obama. Then, he won the Iowa caucuses, and it suddenly seemed that he was going to win the nomination. With the real possibility at hand — and the prospect of finally being done with Hillary — I got a little excited about the idea of Obama winning. But I had my distance.

I was reading Carl Bernstein's "A Woman in Charge," and I identified with something Camille Paglia wrote:

Paglia supports Barack Obama "because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity." This is similar to what Andrew Sullivan said — and, frankly, similar to some things I find myself thinking from time to time... when I'm not talking back to myself about what a disastrous delusion that might be.

Shortly thereafter, that video provided emotional massage.

I was impressed by the characterization of Barack Obama as a "once-in-a-generation" possibility, and by the fact that it sounded like quite an understatement to me.

Now, I've read through the posts and caught up to the present. Have I traced a journey? There is no clear narrative arc as there was in "How Kerry lost me." It's just a slow warming. And we're only at the primary, so there is much still to happen.

There is also the corresponding arc of my reaction to Hillary Clinton, which you can see some of here. As I said above, I haven't liked her, but I pictured myself voting for her anyway — back when she was inevitable. But Obama's growing power allowed me to cast off my resignation. And along with his growing power — after that win in Iowa — came her phony emotional ploys, the garish emergence of Bill Clinton, and the racial insinuations from the Clinton campaign. That drove a wedge into my neutrality, and my opinion broke for Obama.

Camille Paglia thinks Hillary Clinton has "a Nixonian reflex steeped in toxic gender bias."

Camille begins with a review of Hillary's family background. (You can bone up on the subject by reading Carl Bernstein's "A Woman in Charge.") Hillary had a "harsh, domineering father" who abused her "feckless, loutish brothers," and she became "the barracuda who fought for dominance at their expense." Replaying that "ruthless old family drama," "Hillary could barely conceal her sneers" at last Saturday's debate. The other candidates looked like "the wimpy, cringing brothers at the dinner table."

This is rich. Let's read on:

Hillary's willingness to tolerate Bill's compulsive philandering is a function of her general contempt for men. She distrusts them and feels morally superior to them. Following the pattern of her long-suffering mother, she thinks it is her mission to endure every insult and personal degradation for a higher cause -- which, unlike her self-sacrificing mother, she identifies with her near-messianic personal ambition.

It's no coincidence that Hillary's staff has always consisted mostly of adoring women, with nerdy or geeky guys forming an adjunct brain trust. Hillary's rumored hostility to uniformed military men and some Secret Service agents early in the first Clinton presidency probably belongs to this pattern. And let's not forget Hillary, the governor's wife, pulling out a book and rudely reading in the bleachers during University of Arkansas football games back in Little Rock.

Hillary's disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package...

So.... you're going to use the word "feminazi"?

...which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip. Steinem's fawning, gaseous New York Times op-ed about her pal Hillary this week speaks volumes about the snobby clubbiness and reactionary sentimentality of the fossilized feminist establishment, which has blessedly fallen off the cultural map in the 21st century.

Note: Camille does not like the official feminists.

History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary.

I strongly agree with that.

How does all this affect the prospect of a Hillary presidency? With her eyes on the White House, Hillary as senator has made concerted and generally successful efforts to improve her knowledge of and relationship to the military -- crucial for any commander-in-chief but especially for the first female one. However, I remain concerned about her future conduct of high-level diplomacy. Contemptuous condescension seems to be Hillary's default mode with any male who criticizes her or stands in her way. It's a Nixonian reflex steeped in toxic gender bias. How will that play in the Muslim world?

Go read the whole thing, but let me cut to the bottom line.

Paglia supports Barack Obama "because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity." This is similar to what Andrew Sullivan said — and, frankly, similar to some things I find myself thinking from time to time... when I'm not talking back to myself about what a disastrous delusion that might be.

UPDATE: Rush Limbaugh is delighted by Paglia's attack on Clinton (member link):

Camille Paglia is one of the most brilliant arts professors. .... There's hardly a better writer out there, and her use of language, her turn of phrase... Her point here is that Hillary has no core values.... She stands for herself and whatever she has to do to get where she wants. It's just no more complicated than that....

This is Camille Paglia, a liberal, ladies and gentlemen, writing of Hillary Clinton, on Salon.com.

How were Bill and Hillary Clinton different — as law professors?

I've been reading Carl Bernstein's book "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton," and this comparison of the two as law professors caught my eye. (Had you forgotten that they both taught at the University of Arkansas Law School?)

Hillary's style was confident, aggressive, take-charge, and much more structured than Bill's. "All business," a colleague said. Her questions to students were tough and demanding. Bill almost never put his students on the spot; rather, he maintained an easy dialogue with them. His conversational approach often gave students the run of the class, and he let them filibuster.

"If you were unprepared, she would rip you pretty good, but not in an unfair way," recalled Woody Bassett, who became good friends of both, and worked in many Clinton political campaigns. "She made you think. She challenged you. If she asked you a question about a case and you gave an answer, well then — here comes another question. Whereas in Bill Clinton's classes, it was much more laid-back." In class Hillary never mentioned her work on the impeachment inquiry."

(Hmmm... she never mentions her work on the Nixon impeachment inquiry these days either. I wonder why.)

Bill was far more open about discussing political issues with his students, whether Nixon's impeachment or Roe v. Wade, on which he spent several weeks. The subject of his constitutional law course more naturally lent itself to political questions than Hillary's.

(She taught criminal law, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy.)

He was regarded as the easiest grader in the law school. Hillary's exams were tough, and her grading commensurate with what she expected law students to know. There was little doubt that she was the better teacher, possessed with "unusual ability to absorb a huge amount of facts and boil them down to the bottom line," Bassett thought. Clinton was more likely to go at a subject in a circular way, looking at it from every angle and sometimes never coming to a conclusion. But usually his was the more interesting class, because of the passion and knowledge with which he addressed legal questions related to everyday events.

If you were going to be a law professor, which model would you choose, Bill or Hillary? Or is some blend of the two preferable? Assume you'd have to be the Bill-type professor or the Hillary — no blends! Which would you try to be? Is your choice based on what you think is better? What is easier? What will make you more popular? Or is it dictated by your ingrained personality?

If the passage above were all you knew about two individuals, which one would you think would be better suited to the presidency? Or would some blend of the two be preferable?

(Althouse's questions to readers are tough and demanding. Feel free to answer them, at the risk of getting more questions, or to go at them in a circular way and perhaps never come to a conclusion. )

Bill Clinton on Hillary Clinton: "Everything I'm saying here is my wife's position, not just mine."

Bill Clinton is out and about, burnishing his image, basking in the glow of attention. By the way, his wife is running for President. When he's not referring to that woman as "his wife," he likes to refer to her as "she":

"The reason she ought to be president, over and above her vision and her plans is that she has proven in every position she has ever had in life, whether it was in elected office or not, that she is a world-class genius in making positive changes in other people's lives."

Making positive changes in other people's lives.... It sounds so presidential so wifely.

World-class genius... Must we talk about that too? Two thoughts:

1. A man calls his wife a genius. Does it mean anything, even if he charges it up with the 90s modifier "world-class"? "World-class" actually detracts from it. If a man tells you his wife is a "great cook," are you more likely to believe it's anything more than the guy's preening about his own stature if he makes it "awesomely great"? If he tells you his wife looks like a model, does your mental image of her improve if he says she looks like a "super model"? A man is bragging about his woman: That places her ever more firmly in the position of his woman.

2. Remember the way people talked about John Kerry in 2004? Supposedly, he had a brilliant mind, full of "nuance" and "complexity." But, as I wrote at the time, the evidence was lacking. There was also some discussion back then about whether smarter actually is better for a President. But some people — dare I say, especially on the left? — are susceptible to the argument that the most intellectually brilliant candidate ought to win. And right now, these poor souls are being massaged by statements like Bill's about Hillary. So where's the evidence?

I've been reading Carl Bernstein's book "A Woman in Charge." Here's a passage:

By tenth grade, Hillary had realized that she was by no means the smartest member of her class, and that to compete at the top level of academic achievement she would have to work harder than others. She was an honor roll student by force of will, intense preparation, and dutiful study. Even with such extraordinary effort, her grade point average was too low to be among the top ten students in her class.

Meanwhile, Alan Greenspan's book "The Age of Turbulence" lavishes praise on Bill Clinton for his intellect (especially for his grasp of economics and his perception of how things would change in the future). Greenspan classes Bill Clinton with the smartest of all the Presidents he has known: Richard Nixon. Which brings us back to the point that "smartest" doesn't encapsulate what you really want in a President.

ADDED: I love found humor. I was just Googling around for some talk about the irritating adjective "world-class" — the usage panel does not accept it as "as a vague way of emphasizing magnitude or degree" — and I found this 2005 blog post from Brad Feld:

I heard the phrase "world class" three times today. I've decided to toss it on the scrap heap of "phrases that mean nothing to me anymore." I'm finishing up Friedman's The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century(which is awesome BTW - definitely a world class book – I’ll be done on my SF to Chicago trip Thursday night.) It dawned on me that the phrase "world class" isn't indexed against anything. No one ever says, "that's not world class, it's American class."...

In my first company, we talked briefly (I think about 60 seconds) about creating a mission "to be the best software consulting company in the world." After all the MIT / Brown / Wellesley people in my company laughed (“hey Brad, who gives a damn about a stupid vague unattainable mission like that?"), I / we realized that vapid phrases didn't inspire anything (except internal contempt). It took more than 60 seconds to come up with our mission, which was "We suck less."...

We delivered more often then not. So - while we never achieved that elusive "world class" status, we definitely sucked less most of the time. And - when I wandered down the hallways saying "guys - focus on sucking less - that's the key to our success", people rallied a lot more than if I had shouted "we are going to be world class" from the rooftops.

Of course, Bill Clinton can't be saying of Hillary, "She sucks less." But the truth is that's all most of us expect from a candidate, for them to suck less than the others.

More on the new Hillary books.

The NYT has reviews of the two new Hillary books: Carl Bernstein's "A Woman in Charge" and Jeff Gersh and Don Van Natta Jr.'s "Her Way." Michiko Kakutani reviews only the Bernstein book (because the authors of the other book are or were employed by the Times), and outside reviewer Robert Dallek reviews both books. Let's look at the Dallek review first. Here's what he says about the Gersh/Van Natta:

The book’s greatest flaw is its flogging of all the Clinton scandals, not simply because they are so familiar and ultimately came to so little, but also because they give us insufficient clues to what sort of president Mrs. Clinton might be....

Should Hillary Clinton’s personal limitations — her inclination to shade the truth in the service of her ambition, what former Senator Bill Bradley called her “arrogance,” “disdain,” and “hypocrisy” — disqualify her for the presidency?

It is surely preferable to have our most upright citizens sitting in the White House, but history repeatedly shows that presidents with character flaws have not necessarily been less competent leaders, especially in times of crisis, than those with a stronger moral compass....

Oh, fine then. Character... big deal!

About the Bernstein book, Dallek says:

Mr. Bernstein is... hyperbolic about Mrs. Clinton’s influence and importance. President Bill Clinton survived “in office due principally to the actions of his wife, just as their tangled relationship,” he writes, “was central to his being impeached in the first place.”

Mr. Bernstein adds: “The impeachment of the president was a direct reflection of the choices she had made, the compromises she had accepted, however reluctantly, and the enmity engendered by their grand designs, successes and failures.”

Kakutani writes:

Mr. Bernstein’s overall take on Mrs. Clinton [is] that her “experiential openness” gave her a “capacity for personal growth and change”....

[T]his volume does not really appraise Mrs. Clinton’s record as a senator from New York and sheds no new light on her stance on the Iraq war or her current campaign for the White House....

“With the notable exception of her husband’s libidinous carelessness,” Mr. Bernstein asserts, “the most egregious errors, strategic and tactical” of [Bill Clinton's] presidency, particularly in its stumbling first year, are “traceable to Hillary,” including, in large measure, the inept staffing of the White House, the disastrous serial search for an attorney general, the Travel Office brouhaha, Whitewater and the alienation of key senators and members of Congress.

Kakutani notes that the book is really long and that Bernstein spent 8 years writing it and seems rather defensive about spending so much time on it. Are readers going to put up with this? Aside from the health care fiasco, the Clinton Era events that involve Hillary really don't need to be remembered in detail. The Gersh/Van Natta book looks like a better read, perhaps.

When Hillary books collide.

Greg Sargent detects a discrepancy:

[According to "Her Way," by Jeff Gerth and Tom Van Natta] after Bill's election in 1992, he and Hillary were already plotting two terms for her in the White House....

[Carl] Bernstein reports that according to [Hillary's best friend Diane] Blair, Hillary had repeatedly confided to her that aside from a brief flirtation with running for Governor of Arkansas in 1990, she had no interest whatsoever in running for elected office up until 1999, when she started eyeing a New York Senate run....

Of course, it's conceivable that Hillary was privately scheming to run for President while telling her best friend she had no interest in elected office. And as Hillary's best friend, Blair (who has since passed away) might have been expected to deliver an account that was partial to Hillary. But again, this account is a firsthand on-the-record one, while the Gerth-Van Natta one was second hand -- and disputed by the key firsthand witness.

Oh, my! Who to believe! I'm in a tizzy over this! Did Hillary have political ambitions all along or not? I am going to be racking my brain. Too bad Blair passed away and we can't probe her with follow up questions.

Two new books about Hillary Clinton.

Anything new?

"A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by Carl Bernstein, reports that Clinton as first lady was terrified she would be prosecuted, took over her own legal and political defense, and decided not to be forthcoming with investigators because she was convinced she was unfairly targeted. While in Arkansas, according to Bernstein, she personally interviewed one woman alleged to have had an affair with her husband, contemplated divorce and thought about running for governor out of anger at her husband's indiscretions.

"Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., reports that during her husband's 1992 campaign, a team she oversaw hired a private investigator to undermine Gennifer Flowers "until she is destroyed."...

According to Gerth and Van Natta, even before the Clintons were married they formulated a "secret pact of ambition" aimed at reinventing the Democratic Party and getting to the White House. The authors cite a former Bill Clinton girlfriend, Marla Crider, who said she saw a letter on his desk written by Hillary Clinton, outlining the couple's long-term ambitions, which they called their "twenty-year project."...

The authors report that the Clintons updated their plan after the 1992 election, determining that Hillary would run when Bill left office. They cite two people, Ann Crittenden and John Henry, who said Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian and close Clinton friend, told them that the Clintons "still planned two terms in the White House for Bill and, later, two for Hillary."

I'm not troubled that a husband and wife would discuss their shared ambitions, but putting a "secret pact of ambition" in writing seems really disturbing. But is it true? Unless I see the document, I'm not going to get any more exercised over it than I already am about the prospect of a President who's already had his two terms getting back into the White House through his wife.

There's some interesting material at the link about Bill Clinton's affairs, which you'd think would be a very tired subject by now. Bernstein writes about Marilyn Jo Jenkins, "a power company executive he fell in love with and almost left his wife over":

Jenkins ... was spirited into the governor's mansion at 5:15 a.m. for a final, furtive meeting with him the day he left for Washington to assume the presidency -- [and] Bernstein's account makes clear her pivotal role.

Bill Clinton wanted to divorce his wife to be with Jenkins in 1989, Bernstein reports, but Hillary Clinton refused. "There are worse things than infidelity," she told Betsey Wright, the governor's chief of staff.

The key question now is what these things about Bill mean about Hillary. It's not a hard question to answer, though, it seems. The narrative is ambition, and Bill Clinton is what he is. On balance, he's quite useful to an ambitious plan. But who knows the real truth? Who knows what the two of them have said to each other? We can't know, and yet we must form opinions about her.