Don’t get too upset if this whole week plays out like a Nineties Hangover, replaying all the same arguments we were having four or five years ago. This is what it means: Clinton is trying to reframe his legacy, and it’s not working.
Howard Kurtz’s “Media Notes” recycle the same old shameless Clintonista war on the decency of conservatives. Says Joe Lockhart: “The respect and honor that Democrats have shown, in an appropriate way, for President Reagan will not be shown to President Clinton. They don’t live by the same credo. They’re mean and nasty people….They aren’t self-aware enough to understand the image they’ll create for themselves when they trash Clinton at every turn.”
But James Carville is back in his regular role of truth-shredding: He “said what his former boss did is less important than the Bush administration understating the cost of the prescription drug law: ‘Scandals? What scandal? He had sex with an intern, okay?’”
Kurtz does offer Rich Lowry for balance, but he has to underline Rich’s story about people ripping off the dust jacket of “Legacy” because the picture is too flattering.