On come the Clintonistas

You'd think it would be hard to shock someone who's been - I admit it, obsessively - monitoring for over three and a half years the evil that is the George W. Bush presidency, and yet I admit that this administration's absolute mendacity floors me. How is it that someone who prides himself on his high moral standing can get up in front of thousands of people and lie like this?

I believe health care decisions should be made by doctors and patient, not by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. (Applause.) We have a difference of opinion in this campaign. I'm running against a fellow who has got a massive, complicated blueprint to have our government take over the decision-making in health care.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: His plan, if you listen carefully to what he says, would have bureaucrats become the decision-makers, and that would be wrong for America.

How do you fight people who lack any shame? You call in the heavy hitters. That's why I found this post by Paul Waldman in today's Gadflyer so heartening.

Here's an excerpt from the Salon.com review of Kitty Kelly's book:
George H.W. Bush and wife Barbara dismissed Bill Clinton as a pathetic hillbilly when he challenged the incumbent in 1992. But, Kelley writes, Clinton was one of the few Bush opponents who knew how to back them down. As colorful stories from Clinton's sexual past in Arkansas began to surface during the campaign, a Clinton aide began digging into the senior Bush's own robust adultery. This included, writes Kelley, two long affairs -- one with Jennifer Fitzgerald, Bush's White House deputy chief of protocol, who, as the Washington Post once slyly put it, "has served President-elect George Bush in a variety of positions," and one with an Italian woman with whom he set up house in a New York apartment in the 1960s. The Clinton aide told Kelley, "I took my list of Bush women, including one whom he had made an ambassador, to his campaign operatives. I said I knew we were vulnerable on women, but I wanted to make damn sure they knew they were vulnerable too." After the eruption over Clinton's mistress Gennifer Flowers died down, sexual infidelity did in fact become a moot issue in the campaign.
This tells you a little something about why John Kerry is calling on Clinton's people. They know who they're dealing with, and they know how to play hardball.

Bring it on.