|
Well, almost. I am 750 pages deep into this monster and a few things keep leaping out at me, confirming what I suspected about you all along. When you first announced your candidacy for pres and the attacks began immediately, your enemies were a lot like the parable of the blind men who went to "look" at the elephant: each of them grasped one aspect of you, but none of them had the whole picture. Now, I'm not sure if anybody, including YOU, has the whole picture!
Damn, Bill. You are a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction, taking every wrong direction on your lonely way back home. In hindsight, it's amazing that somebody as complex as you could ever be elected; musta been that Elvis aura that you wear so well.
You write pretty good for a hillbilly. Your voice comes right through the pages and you have--as close as you are able--told everything (and I do mean everything ) about your journey in what I have read so far.
Never mind that bu$h couldn't write a paragraph, but with every page I turn, the contrasts between you and him get more glaring. It became obvious from the first few pages that you have learned something from every experience in your life. Your mind will be active months after your body goes into the ground; there's no telling how high your IQ is!
I have read chapter upon chapter about your struggles with your enemies and your demons, but one thing keeps bugging me.
It was in the early fall of 1988, on one of those days when you'd come to the Arkansas Radio Network studios to record your weekly Governor's Address. I was your engineer on those sessions. You were always late. Always. But it was worth the wait just to watch the reaction of the girl at the front desk when you finally did get there! That young woman wanted you so bad, Bill. And she was NOT alone!
That day, you were highly pissed off at Michael Dukakis because he wouldn't fight back against the smears and spears and feces that the Republicans were flinging at him. Then--not five years later--they began throwing worse shit at you. And I'll be god-damned if it didn't look like you were behaving just like Dukakis!
Now, sixteen years and 750 pages later, I am still confused. Hell's Bells, man! You learned a little bit about gutter politics when you were Governor, did you not? And yet you NEVER fought back to amount to anything against people like Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole (how the HELL could you say you like that doddering and spiteful old bastard??), Kenneth Starr and Richard Mellon Scaife. Fuck's sake, Bill! You should have taken the gloves off from day one. You should have made a bloody example of the first motherfucker that DARED to cross you--but you chose not to.
Having overheard a conversation between you and Mike Gauldin about the girl at the front desk (the one who eerily resembled Monica Lewinsky), it was obvious that you had an eye--and other organs--for the ladies. Maybe that was what made you so reticent about fighting back: the thought that there was always more Sex Dirt that your opponents could find and use against you.
But that never stopped Newt Gingrich. Shoot, his hands were WAY dirtier than yours, yet he attacked you viciously at every opportunity. Go figure.
Well, that's about it for now, Bill. Your book leaves me with at least as many questions now as before I began reading it.
One piece of advice, though. You need to shut the fuck UP about moving the Democratic party toward the center. Look where that has landed us in 2004! It might have worked for a Sex God like you, but it ain't working worth a damn for anybody with an ounce less charisma--which is pretty much everybody else.
Your Fellow Arkie,
:hi: dbt
|