Remember all those vicious personal attacks on Hillary Clinton at the Republican convention in San Diego by speaker after speaker? Speaker after speaker at the Democratic convention seemed to. “Stop attacking the president’s family,” Democratic chairman Chris Dodd declared indignantly. Al Gore even sucked up to President Clinton by lauding him for not attacking his opponent’s wife. So which Republicans insulted Hillary and what did they say? Mike McCurry, the White House press secretary, fingered Bob Dole, James Baker, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Dole, of course, zinged Hillary’s book, It Takes A Village, by saying, “It takes a family to raise a child,” which was perfectly respectful. Baker delivered this shot: “Bill Clinton has done for foreign policy what Hillary did for health care.” And Hutchison’s commentary? “In the real world, we don’t want a village to raise a child.”
Vile personal attacks, huh? What Democrats are trying to do is create a double myth: first, that Hillary’s just a down-home traditional first lady, and thus above criticism, and second, that Republicans have attacked her on personal grounds, not as the author of a public-policy book and drafter of the most sweeping piece of domestic legislation in three decades. Wrong on both counts.
