Say Anything Blog

One thing I know all Americans enjoyed about the Clinton administration is something that’s become known as “Clintonian parsing.”  Which is basically when a Clinton lies right to your face, but does it in such an articulate and nuanced way that you’re left sort of…confused, and wondering if you’ve actually been lied to or not.  The most famous example is Bill Clinton’s famous famous statement about the definition of “is.”

Well, Clintonian parsing sort of went away for a while.  Bill left office.  Hillary was elected to the Senate, but was on a lower profile nationally.  But now with Hillary on the campaign trail for the White House, Clintonian parsing is back with a vengeance.  The latest example?  Bill telling us that he didn’t really slow up the release of certain National Archives documents concerning his and his wife’s time in the White House.  Instead he sped it up by, you know, requesting to review every single document before it was released so he could make sure there was nothing embarrassing or incriminating in them.

REDMOND, Washington (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Friday called accusations that he and his wife Sen. Hillary Clinton are delaying the release of records from his administration as “breathtakingly misleading.”

In the most recent Democratic presidential candidate debate, Sen. Clinton’s rivals criticized the front-runner for a 2002 letter written by her husband to the National Archives requesting certain documents from his administration be withheld.

The former president said the letter was, in fact, asking the archives to speed up the release of his records with a provision that he be allowed to review any documents being released to ensure they do not disclose certain sensitive or private information.

Those parameters, according to Clinton, included information about national security, passed-over candidates for presidential appointments, private correspondence between him and his family and other personal conversations.

I’ll tell you what’s breathtaking.  Bill Clinton’s capacity for political spin.

I detest the man’s policies, but from the perspective of sheer political gamesmanship you’ve really got to sort of admire him.