- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I see one very important lesson from the first Clinton that I hope the second has learned. When democrats take over from republicans, they have to clean out the apparatchiks that the rs leave behind. All of them. And, you have to do it in a way that brands them as liars, thieves, cowards and incompetents, so they won't ever return to public life without a chorus of jeers. The first Clinton didn't do that, and look: they're baaack!
To make sure they don't come back, the second Clinton, or any democratic president, has to start ruthlessly going through documents and releasing them to the public. The material should be shoveled out in front of Congress and used to tar these baby Rumsfelds, Wolfowitzs and Scalias with the clear intent of ruining their reputations.
It may not work: Eliot Abrams was resuscitated like some zombie, and Gingrich has blown his burst bubble into the public limelight, but it gives us a fighting chance further down the road.
