Eminent Domain

He can't shut up. You know, former presidents used to give the current president some respect. They realized that they had served their time; their era was over. They remembered what it was like to be in that job, having to make the hard decisions, having the weight of the world on their shoulders. So they tended to give the sitting president a wide berth. After all, they didn't have the information that the current president has at his disposal. They also knew that having the old guy second guessing your moves would be a little damn annoying.

President Bush doesn't get that respect from Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter. One of these men was impeached and disbarred for lying under oath, the other was run out of office for lacking the leadership this country needed at an important moment in history. Their opinions don't mean a thing to me.

I wonder what the reaction of the Democratic party and the media would have been if George Bush Sr had been criticizing Clinton during his presidency? Here are some of the things he could've said...

"I wouldn't have lied under oath in a civil deposition or to a criminal grand jury."
"I would've been curious as to why Attorney General Reno failed to investigate (as per the recommendation of the special prosecutor) the odd pattern of political donations from Don Tyson and Tyson Foods (Big Chicken)."
"I wouldn't have blown up an aspirin factory in the Sudan."
"I wouldn't have wrapped myself in the environmentalist cloth while letting Sec of Interior Bruce Babbitt hook the Fanjul family (Big Sugar) up with a sweetheart deal in the Everglades."
"I wouldn't have used Superfund to shakedown citizens, small businesses, and churches in Quincy, IL to pay $3 million to 'clean up' a city dump that had been closed for 15 years."
"I wouldn't have passed a law in 1996 that retroactively turned more than a million gun owners into felons."
"I wouldn't have used the IRS to audit my political enemies (more than 20 conservative organizations and about a dozen high profile Clinton critics)."
"I wouldn't have allowed tanks and CS gas to be used on American citizens before burning them alive. Or I would've fired my Attorney General because she allowed it to happen."
"I wouldn't have raped Juanita Broaddrick."
"I wouldn't have used federal law enforcement agents to send a small boy back to Communist Cuba."

And those are off the top of my head. Somehow, I think that the Democrats would've been foaming at the mouth angry about statements like this. I doubt the media would be eagerly giving Bush Sr an outlet for these statements either.

Oh and while I'm bashing Clinton, I'd like to highlight one of the great legal ironies of the Clinton presidency. It's overlooked far too often. In September 1994, he signed into law his crime bill which contained Amendments 413 and 415. These amendments allowed defendants in a sexual harassment lawsuit to be asked under oath about their other sexual escapades. He got caught by his own law, and the Supreme Court voted 9-0 that he had to answer. You do it to yourself, Bill, and that's why it really hurts.