A Vast Waistband
Friday, January 14, 2000
All righty, then. Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham, having dropped a full 20 percentage points in one year in her favorability ratings (68 percent in February, 1999 to 48 percent now) decided to try to get it all back at once with an appearance on the David Letterman show Tuesday night.
Let me encapsulate the visit: The studio audience did not applaud after she delivered the scripted applause lines and they did not laugh after she delivered the scripted laugh lines.
An example of a laugh line: Letterman asked about the move to the house in Chappaqua. Mrs. Clinton said it was uneventful except that "the satellite trucks ran over the welcome wagon." Silence.
An example of an applause line: Letterman asked if being a Senator was more difficult than being a Mayor. Mrs. Clinton said it was because as a Senator "you can't arrest a homeless person." Silence.
The best line of the entire visit was Letterman's when he was explaining he had met the Clintons once before. He said that Mrs. Clinton had been very warm and chatty, but that the President had been "standoffish. Your husband looked at me like I was a boob." No, David. If Bill Clinton had thought you looked like a boob �
It wasn't a bad visit. But it wasn't very good, either. Let me say this about Hillary's appearance on the show: She was no Bob Dole.
And � Was I absent the day she began referring to herself as just good old "Hillary Clinton" again? That's the way she was introduced. What happened to the Rodham? Of course, once everyone had to 'fess up about the fact she was told the answers to "the quiz" in advance, she could have been introduced as Hillary Van Doren.
Mullings is writing from the great state of California attending the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee in San Jose. This does not appear to be a Party beset by inner doubts or torn apart by competing visions of the future.
More indications of George W's power in Texas: The filing deadline for state offices closed on January 3. Democrats could not even field a candidate in seven statewide judicial and executive offices up this coming November. That's seven statewide uncontested slots for the GOP.
In New York, meanwhile, the word-on-the-street is John McCain has hired Al Gore's New York election law firm to help gain access to the ballot for that state's primary. There's nothing particularly wrong with McCain looking for help from people who know what they're doing; but it does indicate the Gore team's continuing efforts to use McCain to draw independent votes away from Bradley.
A number of Mullings readers have e-mailed over the past week to enquire what the Congress may do to head off the Clinton Administration's apparent increasing tendency to ignore the pesky Constitutional requirement that actual laws be passed by the Congress. The Administration's sweeping changes to the status of lands in Arizona earlier this week without even consulting local officials is an example.
My suggestion is that the Congress might not be the proper organization to take this on. We might look to a concerted effort by the Governors - at least Republican Governors - to instruct their Attorneys General to look for new ways to enforce the 10th Amendment.
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