Congress, Fox News
When Bill Clinton was asked on MTV during the 1992 presidential campaign whether he wore boxers or briefs, he could have done the world a favor by answering, “None of your business.”
If there ever was a question that deserved to be ducked, it’s “What do you think about your dad’s extramarital affair?”
In the 2008 campaign, Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, now 27, has now been asked twice to provide a justification for her father’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, and has been widely criticized for answering, “None of your business.”
Critics, including my colleague Trish, say that because Chelsea is out on the hustings as a surrogate for her mother, she should have had an answer prepared for this humiliating question. Knowing the Clintons, it’s likely that “none of your business” was the answer the focus groups liked best.
But why should any philanderer’s daughter be asked to answer for her old man’s inability to keep his zipper shut? If there ever was a question that deserved to be ducked, it’s “What do you think about your dad’s extramarital affair?”
If we’re going to adopt this new level of accountability, it ought to be applied fairly. So it has to be fair game to ask John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, who also campaigns for her father, about his long-ago adulteries and more recent relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman; her mother Cindy McCain’s drug problem, which drove her to steal opoids from the medical charity she established; and the involvement of both her parents in the Keating Five Scandal back in 1989.
Right. Don’t hold your breath.
It has as much to do as Barack relationship with his church. He was forced to renounce his preacher because of his comments. Why then can we not ask why Hillary will not leave her husband because of his actions? Why is Bill cheating on his wife, lying under oath and to the American people not as bad as a black man preaching about how bad America has been to his race?
I see what you’re saying with your article and I do think it’s tasteless to ask such a question of a daughter, however – she’s not just his daughter. She’s part of the political campaign and anyone who’s campaigning on behalf of the Clintons’ should fully expect to have to answer these types of questions. While Bill & Hillary’s personal life is none of the American public’s business, it IS our business when our President is lying under oath. It was a stain (no pun intended) on his presidency and if HRC wants to take credit for all the good things that happened during that time, she has to be willing to take criticism for the bad things too.
McCain on the other hand, was not president when he made his indescretions (again, a private matter between him & his wife) and did not lie under oath, so reporters would have no right to ask Meghan about it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t both of these people who asked the questions ultimately Democratic supporters. I know the first guy said he was and had hoped as using the first question as an opportunity for Chelsea to show “her mother’s strength.”
Had it been McCain/Republican plants, that would be one thing, but this is self proclaimed democrats asking these questions. I don’t see how this has anything to do with McCain.
Not to worry Jen, I’m sure future Presidents will simply refuse to go under oath like Bush has done.
Bash Clinton all you want but at least he had the integrity to get sworn in.
Our government is a joke.
I have a case of Depends to donate to the McCain MaGoo campaign.
Sorry Jen, but swearing in under oath and then lying is not having integrity. Not by a long shot.
I can’t tell from the clip of the second incident but the first time, the question was not, “What do you think about your father’s affair,” but more like, “Your mother swore with great authority at the time that your father’s trouble was just the vast right-wing conspiracy in action and she was wrong, wrong, wrong. Does she have any credibility now?” I thought that was a dumb question but not an off-bounds one. Any wife wants to believe her lying husband’s version of things, no matter how transparent it is to the rest of us. My point on the first question was that Chelsea should have anticipated fielding the topic of Monica Lewinsky on campaign stops and been prepared. My point on the second question is that I’m so tired of all this crap — the bad question itself, and the Clinton stonewalling — and this is why the prospect of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea back in the White House again just makes me weary.
Correction: Chelsea was never asked to justify her father’s philandering. She was asked if her mother’s response to the issue hurt her credibility. There is a big difference, and the question she was asked is precisely the business of the electorate.
Why not ask the candidate’s wife, Cindy, about her drug escapades?
“Cindy McCain, the wife of U.S. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, admitted in a series of media interviews Monday that she became addicted to the painkillers Percocet and Vicodin. She said that she used the drugs from 1989 to 1992 and acknowledged that she had stolen some pills from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a charitable organization of which she is president . . . at one point, McCain, 40, was ingesting 15 to 20 pills a day . . . the normal dosage for seriously ill patients is 6 to 10 a day for a short period.”
The Arizona Republic – August 24, 1994
Or asking Johnny boy about his traitorous actions when he was a POW?
“Within days of his release, McCain wrote the following account of his captivity, which was published in U.S. News and World Report – May 14, 1973:
“I think it was on the fourth day [after being shot down] that two guards came in, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guard my injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size of a football . . . when I saw it, I said to the guard, ‘O.K., get the officer’ . . . an officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to know very well as ‘The Bug.’ He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, ‘O.K., I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.’”
“Reds Say PW Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral
. . . Hanoi has aired a broadcast in which the pilot son of United States Commander in the Pacific, Adm. John McCain, purportedly admits to having bombed civilian targets in North Vietnam and praises medical treatment he has received since being taken prisoner.” Saigon-UPI, June 4, 1969
http://www.usvetdsp.com/story22.htm
And while were at it why Has the Democratic Party decided to pander to and Tolerate Homophobic Black Churches to get votes but we have no problem Condeming the Republicans for pandering to Homophobic White Evangelical Christians but see no Problem when Embracing them just because there Black! And can someone please tell me as a Gay Person why this is OK and why I should vote for a Democrat
tpagy ~ republicans will appoint homophobes and fascists to the supreme court aka The Kangaroo scotus
I recommend Sen Larry Craig for McCain’s VP short list.
Or ask him if, after his daily prayers, he then says his daily thankyou to the vietmanese fisherman who saved his napalming ass from that lake he crashed into, or his captors during his imprisonment for sparing his life. Imagine what American farmers would have done to a captured browned skinned pilot in, say, Alabama.