I think that Ford had the response just about right. "Don't make fun of my family." "Be a man, talk about the issues." Breaking up Corker's rally. That hit, and my instinct is that it played really well. Sure, there are all kinds of racist leitmotifs here -- but they're also plainly saying he's corrupt, he's soft on terror -- it's a real Rove smorgasbord of charges against the Democrats. What does the national press pick up? The racial subtext. Yeah, but the other charges are unanswered. They just float out there. The NAACP denounces the racism. National voices chime in. Dear God, don't let Jackson or Sharpton pipe up, or Ford's down five points. Ten. Ford's been playing this with perfect pitch. Please. Ask him what he wants us to do, if anything. My guess is, he wants the racism charge to just be his subtext, and let him be tough on all the other crap the ad brought up.

Got to admit, Ford's answer at a rally, to the effect that "you know your opponent's getting desperate when he accuses you of liking girls" is more on the track.

Years later, and I don't think we know how to answer negative attacks at all. After Willie Horton, everybody yelled about the racism, and of course it was, but the pristine and pure candidate didn't know anything about it, naturally, and asked that the ad be taken down. But everybody nattered on and on about it. A huge capture of the zeitgeist, all for one little racist ad, while the crucial point, that Horton was a murderer; that the law had not been passed by Dukakis; all that just sailed over the plate for a strike.

Most good negative ads aren't really about what we think they're about. The racist subtext is for the rubes. When liberals get all in a froth of denunciation, there's a lot of people who get alienated. They look at the ad and see a ton of (bogus) but unanswered charges.

You've gotten a lot of letters about this article. The glowing reviews of Paglia are mostly not from regular readers. The noise machine has picked up on these ridiculous, non-factual statements by a fatuous, superficial, so-called democrat, and they're here to applaud the nasty conservative woman and shove it in your faces. If you've done it for hits, you've done it. If you've done it to keep long-term subscribers, or add new ones from among the pack who praise this crap, think again. Once these letters are gone, they'll be back on Free Republic, or Hugh Hewitt, or any of the other rightwing sites.

"NO. The issue was the he broke the law. He lied to a grand jury, engaged in obstruction of justice in the case of Paula Jonesand then he lied right to the faces of the American people on prime time television. Finally, what part of breaking the "sexual harrassment" LAWS that you LIBERAL FEMINISTS seemingly espouse don't you understand???"

See what nice bunch of people you bring in with Camille, editors?

If Clinton engaged in all those things, how come he didn't get convicted of any of them? ANY. His fine from the trial judge was for contempt. He and his lawyer made an offer to settle before the appeal of the dismissal of the case, only this time, their mission of entrapment accomplished, the very political Jones lawyers, who had urged Ms. Jones to turn down a very similar offer more tha a year before, were profoundly uninterested in further pursuing the case. Perhaps because they knew they had no valid grounds for appeal. They took $650,000 of the $850,000, while Ms. Jones got about $200,000.

So it went to the Senate to find him guilty of one of the three charges. He was not convicted of any of those charges.

Then there was Robert W. Ray, whose final report in 2002 preceded his decision to run for Bob Torricelli's seat in New Jersey by only a few days. Obviously expecting a big bump in popularity, from his minor role in the Starr witchhunt, the report does say he had "ample evidence" to pursue a charge of perjury. But then, he didn't charge Clinton with that. Why would that be? Because the paragraph was written for political effect, and not based on evidence. But by that time, nobody cared, and Ray dropped out of the race a couple of months later.

As for lying to the people about Ms. Lewinsky, the only answer, Mr. CONSERVATIVE CAPS LOCK, is this: "Weapons of Mass Destruction." "Iraq is the center of the War on Terror."

Oh, and I just realized who Camille really is: none other than the former Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi. He likes getting dressed up in drag and pretending to be a female democrat. He gets off that way.