Deciphering Bill's private master plan - Time for President Clinton to give it up

In the next few days, Barack Obama will officially put Hillary Clinton’s name forward for what should be unanimous confirmation as Secretary of State. Some will question her choice as the face of President Obama’s foreign policy. If she was wrong on Iraq, they’ll ask, how can she be right for Foggy Bottom? Being America’s Smartest Columnist, however, I see the move as bold (bordering on brilliant) for both because in one fell swoop, they remove the biggest obstacle in the path of their respective political careers: former President Bill Clinton.

I understand that Bill is the adopted son of a drunk, and I appreciate the focus it takes to pull off the kind of social climbing that got him from dirt poor in the Ozarks to a nine-figure fortune in Westchester, N.Y. within one generation. I also get that Hillary was probably smarter and more qualified, yet had to hitch her wagon to Bill’s because she came up at a time when a woman’s place was behind her man. But as our new president shows, a broken home and societal prejudice do not excuse bad behavior (one of the many lessons he’s teaching the Clintons), so I don’t give them a pass.

Let’s not forget Bill Clinton’s legacy. A man who got the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian leader to publicly shake hands and left his successor a budget surplus won’t go down in history as having presided over a period of peace and prosperity. All anyone will think of is the fact that he lied to cover up his juvenile play dates with Monica Lewinsky while being deposed in a civil suit brought by Paula Jones. It was the lie that led to his impeachment, the impeachment that caused his last name to become a dirty word, and the associated character assassination that prevented his vice president from being able to run on their administration’s record during the 2000 campaign — the one which gave us President George W. Bush. So there is an unbroken line from the problems we’re now dealing with back to Bill Clinton’s suspect decision to pull little Bubba out to show to an intern in the Oval Office. While he may not have technically done it to Monica, there is no question that he screwed the rest of us.

We had a deal with Bill Clinton. We promised never to mention the word "impeachment" again as long as he went away (and stayed away) until it was time to hand the Democratic party over to the nominee in 2008. But Bill didn’t like that deal too much after his wife declared her candidacy. It was a given that the Democrat was going to get elected, so he wouldn’t be the most powerful person in the party any more. But if Hillary won, not only is he no longer the most powerful person in the party, he’s not even the most powerful person in his own house. He’d just be "former President Clinton" with the emphasis on "former." Seeing that he was doing very well giving speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop and bartering access to himself and his contacts through donations to his namesake foundation and Global Initiative, I believe Bill decided to sabotage his wife’s campaign. And when Hillary was going to be vetted for the V.P. spot, he made it clear the books of the foundation and Global Initiative were staying closed, so junior senator from New York was going to have to be good enough for her.

But when Bill decided to wait until after the Jewish holidays in September to start campaigning (leaving only a few weeks to spend out on the trail), Barack had to know something was wrong. And now he’s president-elect, he can’t have Bill promising God knows what to God knows whom and undermining him with every handshake. So he offered Hillary the top spot in his cabinet. All she had to do was promise to look the other way while he kneecaps her husband. After everything he’s done to publicly humiliate her, she had to take some private joy in hearing that Bill agreed to every condition, turned over the names of all donors to his library and foundation, and will submit future speeches and business deals to the Obama administration for vetting. For a man who’s been running his own pseudopresidency for the last eight years, this has got to be an emasculating development. I can only wonder how much better off we’d all be if Bill had been gelded decades ago.

Politics isn’t checkers, it’s chess. And in the new winner-takes-all game of Democratic Party politics, Barack Obama beat his last opponent, Bill Clinton, by taking his once untouchable queen off the board. Check and mate, see you at the Inaugural Ball.

California has lost its cool - How could we have passed Proposition 8?

On an election day that will be remembered for all the right reasons, California ended up on the wrong side of history. We chose the correct candidate in the race for the White House, but when it came to Proposition 8, the most important statewide ballot question in the country, we blew it. There’s no other way to look at it. The net effect of our collective decision to turn bigotry into law is that the hippest state in the union now looks less progressive than places like North Carolina and Virginia. And we have nobody but ourselves to blame because we, as a state, were tricked into believing lies.

Unless you had your TV turned off for weeks before the election, you saw the same ads I saw. The one in heaviest rotation featured a little girl who comes home from school with a book entitled, "King and King" and tells her mom that she learned a prince married a prince and that she can "marry a princess."

Then someone named Richard Peterson, who is supposed to be a professor at Pepperdine Law, comes on and says, "Think it can’t happen? It’s already happened. When Massachusetts legalized gay marriage, schools began teaching second graders that boys can marry boys. The courts ruled that parents had no right to object." Then a voice-over says, "under California law, public schools instruct kids about marriage. Teaching children about gay marriage will happen here unless we pass Proposition 8." These are the lies I’m talking about.

To clear up any confusion, the Massachusetts court ruling didn’t say parents couldn’t object, it said that parents can’t sue to prevent certain subjects from being taught to their kids. California’s education code (you know, the law that actually covers schools) says health and sex-ed curriculum should "teach respect for marriage and committed relationships."

School districts can decide against teaching health and sex education, and parents can pull their kids out of these (or any) classes on sensitive subjects. The Yes On 8 crowd wanted us to believe that parents’ rights were being infringed upon on a statewide level, but these decisions are handled by school districts, not the state.

If you’ve ever been to a school board meeting, you know there are few things more powerful than a group of concerned parents — and their rights are never, and were never, in any jeopardy.

In figuring out who has an interest in misleading California voters, all you have to do is follow the money. Of the almost $36 million spent in support of passing Prop. 8, 40 percent came from the former polygamist-preaching Mormon Church while this particular ad was paid for, in part, by Focus on the Family.

If an evangelical Christian group working together with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints sounds like an odd pairing, that’s because it is. In 2004, Mormons were specifically excluded from F.O.F.’s national day of prayer because their theology was supposedly incompatible with Christian beliefs and in many churches, Mormonism is thought to be more of a cult than a religion. But their working together to take a fundamental right away from millions of Californians because of how they have sex shows they share a common bigotry. I know politics makes strange bedfellows, but this is ridiculous.

The real problem for all of us is that the gay community is tough, organized, and economically powerful. When gay bashing became a problem in Boston’s very gayfriendly South End, street patrols were put together when the police wouldn’t respond, with the protection provided by a posse called the Pink Panthers. I’m not making that up. I’m not that good of a writer.

But with marriage in our state now defined as between a man and a woman (thanks to a group of people who believe that marriage can be between a man and as many women as are willing to serve him), we can say good bye to some desperately needed economic stimulation.

Most same-sex couples are D.I.N.K.’s (dual income, no kids) and have lots of disposable income to spend on each other. If you voted in support of Proposition 8, you’re partly responsible for costing California the windfall that would have come from the impending boom in gay weddings and honeymoons all over our state.

The next time we have a budget deficit, think of all the revenue that would have come from these "Bridezilla" meets "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" meets "My Super Sweet 16" tastefully over-the-top, once-in-alifetime events.

Then ask yourself how smart it is to sacrifice money that could be used to improve our schools so the idea that people of the same sex can get married isn’t taught in our schools.

Wishful thinking - Obama wins!

You read it here in April of last year under the headline, "Readers better get used to a black president." I was the first person to predict Barack Obama would win the election and if he does, I will naturally assume the title of "America’s Smartest Columnist."

Being so far ahead of the curve, I’ve had more time than most to consider what an Obama presidency would mean for America. I’ve concluded that a government led by President Obama means the country has a real chance to stop kicking the proverbial can down the street, waiting for the results of the next election cycle, and finally solve the problems we face.

It also means Washington gridlock due to partisan politics would end as Barack Obama’s election signifies the death of the Republican Party and the beginning of an American Renaissance.

For 28 years, the Republican Party (a loose coalition of people who believe in closed borders, criminalizing abortion, lower taxes, less government spending on people, and more government spending on the military) has come to dominate not just our government, but our whole political process. With the exception of the two years between 1992 and 1994, the Republicans controlled either the executive branch or the legislative branch — and between 2000 and 2006, they had both.

They brought us a wall on our southern border, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, tax cuts for rich people, doubled the national deficit, and $10 billion every month spent on the occupation of Iraq. To top off their unbroken streak of failures, we got the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression brought on by Republican deregulation schemes.

They were all but dead in 2006 because of their blind support for the Iraq occupation, and their current demise is being accelerated by the fact that they’re the party of division at a time when the country is desperate for national unity. That’s why so many Americans have rejected the Republican ideology (including many self-identified Republicans) that it is now a regional, rural, white party — which is another way of calling it "irrelevant." With the gifts they’ve given us over the last eight years, I have to say it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving group of people.

The list of Republicans crossing party lines to endorse Obama before the election will seem short compared to the list of Republicans who will confess to being "shocked" that they voted for a Democrat now that the election is over; and they’re a big part of the reason gridlock won’t be a problem for President Obama. Even those people who don’t agree with him won’t want to get on his bad side. Imagine being a member of Congress refusing to give your support to President Obama’s healthcare bill when the phone rings and it’s Joe Biden calling from the White House. Or, even worse, it’s Michelle Obama. Are you really going to withhold your vote and run the risk of ending up on Barack’s radar? Of course not. You’re going to go along to get along — if you know what’s good for you.

Our first President had no patience for partisan pettiness preventing political progress, and I doubt very highly that our next president will have any, either. Not when he has a Republican-started "war" in Iraq to end, a Republican-neglected war in Afghanistan to win, a Republican-sponsored deregulation-generated global economic crisis to help solve, and a Republican-coddled energy industry to modernize.

The same way George Washington’s election signaled the end of the American Revolution and the birth of a nation, Barack Obama’s election signals the end of the Reagan Revolution and the beginning of a period in our history I’m calling the American Renaissance and that I’m excited to be alive for.

The results are not in as we go to press, so there is a small chance John McCain won the election. If that’s the case, I’ll still be using this space to tell Republicans where to go and how to get there, but I’ll be submitting my work from Milan, not Santa Monica. I can deal with the whole original-sin-of-slavery, 3/5-of-a-person, institutionalized racism thing that comes with being black in America. But if this guy, who was the top of his class at Harvard Law School and whose mother was a white woman from Wichita, can’t get elected after what he’s done over the last two years, then the deal is off. If this country can’t accept Barack the president, then it can’t have Kenny the columnist, either. At least until 2012 when he runs again.