Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

To know Clinton is, sooner or later, to be exasperated by his indiscipline and disappointed by his shortcomings. But through it all, it has been easy enough to retain an enduring admiration—even affection—for a president whose sins against decorum and the dignity of his office seemed venial in contrast to the systemic indifference, incompetence, corruption, and constitutional predations of his successor’s administration. That is, easy enough until now.

This winter, as Clinton moved with seeming abandon to stain his wife’s presidential campaign in the name of saving it, as disclosures about his dubious associates piled up, as his refusal to disclose the names of donors to his presidential library and foundation and his and his wife’s reluctance to release their income-tax returns created crippling and completely avoidable distractions for Hillary Clinton’s own long-suffering ambition, I found myself asking again and again, What’s the matter with him?

-- TODD S. PRUDHAM

Former President Bill Clinton took the microphone here on Monday and began with a lament that it might be his last day as a campaigner.

If so, he went out venting the kind of anger that has punctuated his efforts to put his wife in the White House. He jumped energetically around South Dakota to what were likely to be the final small dots on the Clinton campaign’s 2008 electoral map — a campaign that at times seemed to be about Bill Clinton and the baggage he had brought to the race as much as it was about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her efforts to leave all that behind.

After a weekend in which his aides sought to discredit an article in Vanity Fair that, relying primarily on anonymous sources, raised questions about his judgment, the company he keeps and whether he was spending time with other women, Mr. Clinton unleashed a tirade against the article’s author, Todd S. Purdum, a former reporter for The New York Times. Mr. Purdum is married to Dee Dee Myers, a White House press secretary under Mr. Clinton.

-- MICHAEL LUO

Whiny-ass-titty-baby Bill Kristol uses his valuable NY Times real estate to bitch about Obama not mentioning the military in his commencement address at Wesleyan last week.

I have to admit, I watched the speech, and I didn’t see that criticism coming. And if military service is so great (and I thought it was), how come Kristol never served? Or is that just for the proles?

I bet the NY Times sure is proud they chose Kristol. I think every great newspaper needs a full-fledged propagandist on the op-ed pages.

-- JOHN COLE

The glee with which some have pounced on Obama's decision to quit TUCC strikes me as unbecoming to anyone who takes faith seriously. The premise, of course, is that Obama doesn't take faith seriously, that his own relationship with Jesus is faked, that only politics brought him to Trinity and only a combination of concealed communist sympathies and hatred of America kept him there. Since the hard right has fused politics with religion, this cynicism is perhaps understandable. But it doesn't make it any truer.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

Foreign policy is supposed to be McCain's strongest turf, but, fortunately for him, he continues to run below the radar, thanks to the national attention being paid to Hillary Clinton's ongoing delusional crusade.

It may have crested over the weekend in Washington. I have deliberately given short shrift to the decision-making of the Democratic National Committee's ruling on the Florida and Michigan delegations, for this simple reason:

She was beaten in this race before the Saturday meeting began, and she remains beaten this morning. (At this point, it's barely worth mentioning the Clintonian hypocrisy on full display; Harold Ickes, who pushed the case for full seating of the two outlaw delegations, voted as a DNC member last August to strip both delegations.) The only real news, out of Saturday's meeting, is that, within the Democratic party, the power torch has been passed from the Clintons to Obama.

After South Dakota and Montana vote . . . Obama will only need roughly 30 superdelegates (out of roughly 150 supers still available) to reach the total delegate number required for nomination. It's even conceivable that he could pick up 30 during the next 24 hours, in advance of those final primary tallies.

All told, "as history shows, the Democratic nomination goes to the candidate who wins the most delegates." That's what Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, wrote back on Feb. 13.

Of course, Clinton can still elect to appeal the DNC ruling and fight on into the summer - if she truly desires to wreck her political future and the '08 prospects of her own party. The choice is hers.

-- DICK POLMAN

[I]f you want to blog about something that hardly anyone in the MSM or the internet is writing about, might I suggest you write something about John McCain?

The poor fellow is, for all intents and purposes, being ignored. Now admittedly, the Democratic race (such as it is) holds out a lot more promise of being interesting on any given day. You just never know, for instance, what radical in Obama's background is going to jump up and say something totally outrageous. After all, the guy has more leftist nuts associated with him than are found at a convention of Communist squirrels. And if you stick a microphone within 10 feet of Bill Clinton, you're bound to hear something interesting, quotable, and off the wall – three attributes that are guaranteed to generate "controversy."

Rarely have I seen the media in such lockstep. Each ginned up episode of outrage (as in the press releases from each camp always beginning "Senator Clinton’s outrageous statement . . . " or "Senator Clinton is outraged at Senator Obama’s statement . . . ") is dutifully and faithfully reported as if most people actually care about these things. Then to make matters worse, the gaffe or statement is parsed to death, milking every last drop of make believe as if there was something gravely important in it.

-- RICK MORAN

Photograph by Paul J. Richards/AFP-Getty Images