Gingrich goes Bob Dole one better

Lore has it (who knows, maybe the polling data doesn't back it) that Bob Dole disqualified himself for the presidential nomination in 1988 with a testy challenge to George H. W. Bush: stop lying about my record. That was in response to a Bush ad accusing Dole of "straddling" on taxes.

Newt Gingrich, who knows he's going nowhere and counts himself destroyed by Romney's hands-off SuperPac ads, has defined intraparty decency down down down. On CBS this morning, he told Mitt Romney to stop lying about...everything.  Recap below starts with a question by Norah O'Donnell:

Beating the Bushes for START

Another flashback from The Clinton Tapes: when Clinton found himself 20 votes short for NAFTA passage in the House,

he shifted back to presidential chemistry at the kickoff event for NAFTA. Carter and Bush had stayed with him overnight...Gerald Ford joined them for dinner on the night of the Middle East ceremony, and then again for a private breakfast before the NAFTA presentation. Clinton's staff found no prior record of so many presidents eating meals together at the White House (pp 50-51)

Four presidents for NAFTA...could Obama -- or Gates -- not call on George H.W. Bush to counter the ignorant demagoguery of Mitt Romney and other Republican "leaders" posturing against ratification of the  START arms reduction treaty with Russia?  And, for that matter, on the Prodigal Son, not to say Bill Clinton himself? 

Incidentally, The Clinton Tapes has got to be the worst-indexed book I've ever encountered.

State-Croft in the Obama Administration, cont.: the Deputies' Committee

A detailed portrait of the Obama administration's foreign policy apparatus by the FT's Edward Luce and Daniel Dombey presents a mixed bag, a work in progress.  One key facet  has an interesting pedigree: personnel from the Clinton administration slotted into a structure adapted from the administration of George Bush, Sr.  That is the "deputies' meetings":

Mr Obama’s character is also stamped on the inter-agency process, set up and managed by Tom Donilon, deputy national security adviser. The nitty-gritty of foreign policy-making is done at these frequent “deputies’ meetings”, which can sometimes consume four to six hours a day
.
Described by one insider as “the most powerful man in the White House whose name isn’t widely known”, Mr Donilon, who was an official in the Clinton administration, is the man who keeps Mr Obama’s trains running on time. And there are a lot of trains. Last year, Mr Donilon held 270 deputies meetings – a workload described as “clinically insane” by a former senior diplomat under Bill Clinton.

You run in poetry....

Since Andrew Sullivan has opened season on electoral op-verse, here goes: three once- and one future- (?) presidents basking in the endless summer of lyric immortality...

Bye, George (1993)

"Read my lips - no new taxes"
worked better in theory than in praxis.

Relic (1997)

Don't call it a mess
on Monica's dress,
that site of encounters ethereal.
Transformed at a touch
(with a gasp and a clutch)
into true Presidential material.

Responsible Partyboy (2002)

As a deeply moral man
of inherent nobility,
I'm calling for corporate
responsibility.
It works for me.
Each day I bless
corporate responsibility
for my success.


Let's Hope it Doesn't Come to This (2009)

There once was a President, Clinton,
who won her election by hintin'
her Rival Obama
had rich psychodrama
in his heart of darkness a glintin'.

c. Asp of Xpostfactoid