How bad were they?
By Lawrence Henry
web
posted January 7, 2002
One recent morning, as I was driving my son Bud to school, a story came
on the radio.
"Sad news from Chappaqua," said the announcer on the New York-based
AM news station. "Buddy the First Dog, the chocolate Lab adopted
by President and Mrs. Clinton in the White House, was hit by a car and
killed this morning
"
"Buddy the First Dog?" Bud laughed, struck by the phrase.
"Let me tell you about Buddy the First Dog," I said to Bud,
"because it shows just what bad people Bill and Hillary Clinton are."
And so I told him. I told him how, when the Clinton administration was
getting bad press, the Clintons took a poll - I had to explain to Bud
what a poll was - to find out what they could do to warm up their public
image. The answer came back: Get a dog. And they took other polls, and
conducted focus groups, to find out what kind of dog the American public
liked best. Labrador, came back the answer. Chocolate Lab.

Buddy on the Clintons (August 1999) |
So they got a chocolate Lab puppy, and they named him Buddy. And from
time to time, Buddy would appear in video clips or photographs with President
Clinton, straining against his leash, displaying the unmistakable doggy
body language of the neglected pet: "Who is this guy? Lemme go!"
Who knows where Buddy went between photo ops? In anybody else's White
House, Buddy would have become the dog-in-secret of an usher or a Secret
Service man. In the Clinton White House, that would have required detaching
an usher or Secret Service man from servitude to the Clintons themselves.
That would have required a minimal acknowledgment that Buddy was a creature
of some intrinsic value.
"No, they wouldn't do any of that," I said to Bud. "Buddy
was a neglected dog. And when the Clintons left the White House, and when
Hillary bought a house in Chappaqua, New York, that's where they dumped
the dog.
"Did you notice what else the news report said?" I went on.
"Bill and Hillary weren't home when Buddy got run over. They're basically
never home. The announcer said they don't even know what happened to Buddy,
whether he was being walked or whether he got loose."
"But the announcer said Bill Clinton said he was sorry Buddy got
run over," Bud pointed out.
"It was just the kind of thing politicians say in public,"
I told Bud. "It's a good-sounding lie."
"Boy," said Bud, "I'm sure glad Bill Clinton isn't President
any more."
Lately, a spate of stories has appeared, describing how the Clintons
are trying to burnish their "legacy" via some renewal of their
usual propaganda offensive. They even held a meeting with various of their
flacks about how to do it, I understand.
It's too late. Something will always come up to remind us what they were
really like: Buddy the First Dog, Elian Gonzalez, the Branch Davidians,
an aspirin factory in the Sudan, the sailors on the U.S.S. Cole - all
props, all symbols, all exploited for the moment, then cast aside when
they were no longer needed.
And not for the first time will we be reminded that someone, somewhere,
aptly pointed out how much the Clintons were like Tom and Daisy Buchanan
in The Great Gatsby. They smashed things up. They smashed things up, and
they really didn't care. 
Lawrence Henry is a senior writer for Enter Stage Right.

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