(Garry) Trudeau and Clinton in Rolling Stone
Trudeau's best line on W: "He later became rush chairman of Deke--I do believe he has the soul of a rush chairman. He has that ability to connect with people."
This expands a bit on the old description of W. as a frat boy. Bush is the leading frat boy who would be willing and able (perhaps a bit the worse for wear) to meet the police at 3 a.m. "True, there's some property damage, but you know from experience we pay for what we break. And I know the disappearance of the three young ladies is more serious, and their parents are here and all that, but here are the young ladies themselves, safe and sound!" Unfortunately, Kerry seems like a good who couldn't be bothered to show up at 3 a.m., because it was too much trouble. Clinton, of course, would be with one of the young ladies. Bush would be either misinformed about the number of them, or lying.
A weirder one:
He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable. He was very good at all the tools for survival that people developed in prep school--sarcasm, and the giving of nicknames. He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation.
This sounds a bit Monthy Python (Looking for sarcasm, litotes? Verbal abuse over here). But the suggestions of manipulation and control are interesting.
I like Clinton's cool-as-a cucumber assessment of the 2004 race: "If you assume that we carry every place we won last time, we win. But you can't assume that, because President Bush has been to Pennsylvania twenty-five times or something." Also Clinton's assessment of the Homeland Security bill: originally a Democratic initiative, which Bush opposed; then Bush added some amendments and insisted that anyone who didn't vote on his version of the bill wasn't a patriot. This helped the Republicans take the Congress in 2002. It's in that context that Kerry and Edwards voted for the war in Iraq. Again, the pros recognize that W is at least the figurehead of a first-class political operation. Clinton: "It's a great mistake to underestimate him."
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Wow... we need three different blogs to try to get our point across???
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