The Best 200 Zippergate
Quotes
to the Elect Hobie Homepage
"Words at great moments of history are deeds."
C. Attlee's tribute to Churchill's
wartime statements
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Sorry, Stupidity, Character, Hillary, Polls
"He's getting closer to saying, 'I'm sorry.'"
Sen. John Breaux NYTimes 9/3/98
"I was motivated [to mislead] by many factors.
First, by a desire to protect
myself from the embarrassment
of
my own conduct." Clinton
"This matter is between me... my wife and our daughter -- and our
God. It's nobody's business but ours." Clinton
"Oh yea, I forgot. It's all Ken's fault."
Senior White House Aid after hearing Clinton had complained his anger at
Mr. Starr prompted him to seek relief with Ms. Lewinsky
"I feel like someone who is surrounded by
an oppressive force that is creating a lie about me and I can't get the
truth out." B. Clinton
"Pray for me." B. Clinton at a meeting
with Democratic Senators. "If I thought it would do any good I would."
One who attended the meeting.
"Rather than lie to the grand jury himself,
the President lied about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky to senior aides,
and those aides then conveyed the false story to the grand jury."
Clinton Advisor, B. Lindsey
"It is a measure of the scope of Mr. Clinton's
political problems that he feels compelled to address them directly and
repeatedly. In past controversies over matters like his campaign
finances, Mr. Clinton preferred to ignore any accusations in the belief
that the public was more interested in his agenda." NYTimes
"The credibility of repentance diminishes
the closer one gets to being found out. In Clinton's case, this came
on the day the Starr referral arrived on Capital Hill. Repentance
also appears more genuine when it doesn't have to be extracted but is freely
offered-- when it comes from the heart and not from focus groups."
Cal Thomas
"He must have been a total idiot
to think he is the President of the United States
and whatever he did wouldn't come out."
Joey Cabrera, 16 years old
"There's always been the assumption that the president
wouldn't be stupid enough to leave his voice on an answering machine."
White House Aide.
"I sometimes wondered if Bill was intentionally
courting danger. Could he have actually been trying to get caught
in a scandal so he could then try to wrangle his way out of it?"
G. Flowers after describing when Clinton approached her for sex in the
Governor's Mansion while Hillary was but a few feet away.
"I formed an opinion early in 1996, once I
got into this unfortunate and wrong conduct, that when I stopped it, which
I knew I'd have to do and which I should have done a long time before I
did, that she would talk about it. Not because Monica Lewinsky is a bad
person. She's basically a good girl.... But I knew that the minute
there was no longer any contact, she would talk about this. She would
have to. She couldn't help it. It was part of her psyche.
So I had put myself at risk." Clinton before the Grand
Jury. Clinton didn't stop the sexual activity with Lewinsky until May 24,
1997 -- 3 days before the Supreme Court released its opinion allowing Paula
Jones' case to be heard while he was in office.
"He knew the rules had changed." Close
campaign advisor.
"My biggest question is how come Clinton had
a sexual relationship with an intern in his office? That is so amateur."
Japanese newspaper reporter
""The fundamental fact is that simple, breath-taking
stupidity is at the heart of this whole sorry mess. Clinton was not
'entrapped'; he thrust himself into a trap that was always there.
He handed his enemies the sword with which they are now cutting him to
pieces. It is unfortunate that our nation must suffer for so long
while he gets what is coming to him for having been so dumb." B.
Friedlander
"Character is a journey not a destination."
B. Clinton
"He almost makes Nixon look like a moral giant."
T. Finneran, Speaker of Mass. House
"I ask that all Americans demonstrate in their
personal and public lives... the high ethical standards that are essential
to good character and to the continued success of our nation." B.
Clinton 10/17/97 "National Character Counts Week"
"One day she [Monica] came was kind of depressing
because it was the President and First Lady's anniversary or something
to that effect. And I just made a mental note thought that was not
the way to celebrate a traditional family anniversary in my opinion."
S. Pape, uniformed Secret Service guard. The date was October 11,
1997, Clinton's 22 wedding anniversary.
"There is nothing that this man [Clinton]
won't do. He is immune to shame. Move past all the nice posturing
and get really down in there in him, you find absolutely nothing... nothing
but an appetite." Jesse Jackson
The Clinton's valued his used underwear at
$6 @ and his used running shoes at $40 for a charitable deduction on their
tax return.
"He has a defective shit-detector about personal
relationships sometimes. He is also careless about appearances."
B. Wright
"Bill Clinton is an impressively effective
politician, but he is an embarrassment to the legal profession. If
he were a member of any law faculty in the country, his treatment of women
would have led to revocation of tenure and dismissal. Indeed, I would
hope that the admissions committee at my law school, knowing what we now
know about the man, would not even admit him to law school." James
Huffman.
"Bill Clinton has acted for the past year
on his deepest beliefs: that law is merely politics, that truth is
merely spin, that an oath is merely rhetoric, that justice merely power."
W. Kristol in Newsweek 12/21/98
Lewinsky and her parents attended a
taping of Clinton's weekly radio address and had photos taken on June 14,
1996
"If Bill Clinton was the Titanic,
the iceberg would have sunk." P. Green
Bill Clinton has always been blessed by voters'
low expectations and an ability to weather humiliating public scrutiny
that would send most politicians racing to the shelter of private life.
"
"We need you. I need you." S.
Chesley, leading trial lawyer who has made a fortune from contingency fees
and raised million of dollars for Democratic candidates
"He ain't much but he's all we got."
Clinton Supporter
"I prefer human leaders, and Bill Clinton
seems to have a sin for each of us to identify with." Indiana woman
writing to Wm. Safire
Political candidates have become stars, primaries
casting calls, campaigns auditions, the President the Entertainer-in-chief,
and the electorate, the audience. Life the Movie by Neal Gabler
"Mr. President, it seems to me that you have
demonstrated, at least in my adult lifetime, a higher commitment to the
kind of moral leadership that I value in public service and public policy
than any other person I've ever met." S. Grossman, Democratic National
Committee Chairman
"He's the most fun President we've ever
had -- I think we can all agree about that." James Brolin
"I'll bomb Baghdad, I'll bomb France, if you'll
remove my underpants." Fondle Me Bubba dolls.
"My guests struggled to keep the tone of the
discussion above even the least suggestive sexual terms, yet they inevitably
fell into phrases like 'pure naked politics' and 'a stain on the Presidency....'
I found in my diary a note that our executive producer thought the
story was dying. The date was January 28. At about the same
time I told the producer that I'd buy him dinner if the President wasn't
actually out of office by October. I lied. Well, it wasn't
actually a 'lie.' It all depends on what is legally meant by the
phrase 'out of office.'" Keith Olbermann about his 228 daily shows
on MSNBC that he described as "a never-ending Serial of Lawyers from Hell."
"Clinton's wife should slap him silly."
K. Prosper, age 14
"I'm not some little woman standing by my man
like Tammy Wynette." H. Clinton
"If it were my marriage I'd kill him."
Amy Issacs, national director of Americans for Democratic Action.
"Hillary didn't want Ken Starr to kill her
husband. She wanted him alive so she could do it later." Friend
of H. Clinton
"When he referred to Monica and her Rockettes
blanket, one could almost hear the crockery breaking in the East Wing."
NY Times
Curious to see how Mrs. Clinton was bearing
up under the Lewinsky case, an unusually large contingent of reporters
attended a White House event to increase awareness of colon cancer and
urge Americans to be screened for the disease. "Mrs. Clinton scanned
the room and sarcastically declared herself to be 'thrilled by the concern
the press is showing for colon cancer.' As the event ended, Mrs.
Clinton invited her guest to a reception... and the press into the Green
Room to undergo a screening for the disease." J. Broder
"It's lucky for America we have a woman with
the strength to lead the nation right now. And everybody understands
she is one of the leaders of the nation right now, as much as the President."
Rep. Dennis Kucinich about Hillary Clinton
"After seven long months, what we got was
four minutes of petulance and prevarication. It felt less like a
speech than a slap.... Early reports are that Hillary Clinton had a hand
in the speech. This would seem to suggest that Dr. Freud was right:
a person who has been hurt by another individual will sometimes take unconscious
revenge." P. Noonan
"Her tolerance for some of his behavior just
amazes me." Betsy Wright, campaign staffer in charge of "Bimbo Eruptions."
"If you were about to go on vacation with
your husband and he had just admitted having sex with a 21 year-old intern,
would you still go?" 68% of women said no. Time/CNN poll
"While humiliated and in pain, she is not
shocked." Jesse Jackson on H. Clinton
"We have to work
with human beings as we find them." H. Clinton
"We didn't marry him; we hired him.
She signed on for better or worse. We elected him to make things
better." N. Gibbs & M. Duffy
"In the summer of 1995 all the President
wanted to do was play golf on Martha's Vineyard, but Dick Morris' polls
sent him hiking in the Rockies instead. Golf, Morris advised the
President, was a Republican sport. The voters he needed to win over
were the kind who went camping, so the Chief Executive would have to sleep
in a tent."
as reported by E. Kolbert
"Well, we just have to win then." Clinton
when Dick Morris told him an instant poll showed the public was willing
to forgive him for adultery but not for perjury.
"It's hard to get that moral-authority thing
rolling when the White House officials poll to see whether the president
should tell the truth." M. Dowd
Although at least one of his attorneys strongly
counseled Clinton to refuse to testify before the grand jury, he was swayed
by polls that showed he would put his high approval rating at risk if he
refused to testify or took the 5th.
"Image seems to have been the main reason
behind the choice of President Clinton's dog, Buddy. Clinton's personality
actually is more compatible with cats. But in the pre-Monica era,
his advisers feared he would lose his 'family' image when his daughter,
Chelsea, went away to college. They reasoned that the impression
of a family man could be maintained by having Hillary and a happy dog meet
the president when his helicopter landed on the White House lawn.
The Labrador Retriever, America's most popular dog, was the obvious choice.
But it couldn't be a black Lab; they don't photograph well. It couldn't
be a yellow Lab; they photograph too well, possibly upstaging the president.
So that's why the 'first dog' is a chocolate-colored Lab." S. Coren
"The public which has come to know far too
much about this President, never got to see the angry, adolescent side
of Bill Clinton... because he was protected by the most sophisticated communications
apparatus in the history of American Politics. The amount of money
and energy spent on polling, on market-testing every new idea, every turn
of phrase, was phenomenal." Joe Klein
"I wonder how far Moses would have gone if
he'd taken a poll in Egypt. What would Jesus Christ have preached
if he'd taken a poll in Israel? It isn't polls or public opinion
of the moment that counts. It's right and wrong." Harry Truman
The Best 200 Zippergate Quotes
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Copyright original materials and format only,
1999
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