Wednesday January 24 2:46 AM ET
Clinton Phrase Now a GOP Favorite
By RON KAMPEAS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - It's a Clintonian legacy that Republicans - even those who
most revile the man from Chappaqua - have embraced with great enthusiasm: the
Politics of Personal Destruction.Not the practice, the phrase. In recent
months, Republicans have outnumbered Democrats by about seven to one in using
a phrase that lends moral chagrin to what once was known simply as ``smear
campaigning.''The funny thing is - well, let the users speak for
themselves.``I KNOW Bill Clinton coined the phrase,'' says Linda Chavez,
President Bush (news - web sites)'s would-be labor secretary.``I KNOW it's
Bill Clinton's phrase,'' says Larry Klayman, best known in Washington for his
dogged pursuit of the Clintons through the courts.So, probably, does freshly
anointed George W. Bush (news - web sites) aide Mary Matalin, who used it
twice in five minutes this weekend on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' - once to
chastise those who call John Ashcroft (news - web sites) an extremist, and
then to describe the post-recount recounts in Florida.``It's become a
cliche,'' lamented Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She said what was once a
useful phrase is ``crossing into the realm of meaninglessness.''An archival
search of the 2000 campaign and its aftermath found that Republicans led the
Democrats seven to one in using the phrase: from a fracas over an old
firearms arrest in an otherwise unwatched Oklahoma congressional race to Bush
himself, swatting away criticism of his efforts to duck South Carolina's
Confederate flag free-for-all. After the election, it became a favorite of
Katherine Harris defenders in Florida.One of the few recent instances of
Democratic use was in July, when Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites)
complained about reports that she used an anti-Semitic slur decades ago.Her
husband coined the phrase in 1994, when allegations of fraudulent land
dealing in Arkansas started to dominate headlines.``I do not believe that the
politics of personal destruction is what the American people are interested
in,'' he said at a news conference on March 8 of that year. Evidently, he
liked it: Within days, he was using the phrase at Democratic
fund-raisers.Jamieson, who analyzes American political rhetoric, said the
phrase was one of the more notable presidential legacies to the American
language - although it fell far short of Ronald Reagan's ``evil empire''
quote. Clinton had tapped into frustration with tabloid politics.``People
were saying, we should not be engaging in politics to destroy other persons
or ideas,'' she said. ``We should be forcefully designating areas of
disagreement.''She traces Republican appropriation of the phrase to late
1998, around the time a slew of extramarital revelations surfaced about
members of Congress prosecuting Clinton during the impeachment hearings.It
was a rare occurrence. ``We'd just coined a political phrase both sides are
comfortable with,''' she said.Not for long. Now, she says, the phrase is used
by the party in power to inhibit legitimate discourse - for instance,
Matalin's dismissal of the continued Florida vote count. Matalin was
unavailable for comment.Republicans say their increased use is natural and
stems from looser Democratic standards.``The Clinton administration gathered
information through illegal means,'' said Klayman, whose organization,
Judicial Watch, filed a suit on behalf of hundreds of Republicans whose FBI (
news - web sites) background files were collected by the Clinton White
House.Klayman used it in an interview this week with The Washington Post to
describe attacks on conservatives Paul Weyrich and John Ashcroft.Chavez, who
repeatedly used the phrase when her candidacy for the labor post was
torpedoed by revelations that she housed an illegal immigrant, says it goes
both ways.``I defended Clinton in my column during the whole Paula Jones
thing,'' she said. ``That was ridiculous.'' And the man himself? Does he
deserve creator's credit?``It was a good phrase,'' conceded Chavez.Klayman
was less charitable. ``Takes one to know one.''
