-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> eGroups eLerts It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free! http://click.egroups.com/1/9698/1/_/356655/_/977540797/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> Christopher Ruddy, Friday, Dec. 22, 2000 Wrote: ===================================================== December 21, 2000 Al Gore Office of the Vice President The White House Dear Al, I apologize for not replying to your last letter sooner. As you know, Hillary and I have been busy. We have spent our whole adult lives in public housing and now must move into three homes. Now that the Senate race is over, Hillary wants to dump the Chappaqua house. It worked and we’re finished with it. She kept Lazio’s numbers so low in the suburbs she kicked his ass. Can you imaging Hillary as the suburban housewife? I always thought I was the best actor – now I realize she is. I am just a ham. Here we are, leaving this great old house. We’ll be making our home in New York and L.A. and Washington. We’re also thinking of a place in London, because it’s a great jumping-off place for all those international meetings. I'm tired of hotels – too many video cameras! Too many paid-off bell hops snooping for the press! You know what I mean. I will also be out in L.A. a lot. Spielberg has a guest house and says I can use it. He wants me to work on several movie projects with him. I have always told you Hollywood is the key to understanding this country and changing it. We need to keep our focus there. I know you are thinking about Harvard, but you may want to consider the media. I read your letter and all I can say is something my uncle Harold told me when I was boy in Hope. He said, "Never look back." Imagine that I let the "that woman, Ms. Lewinsky" matter bother me! Don’t get me wrong; Hillary and I believe in payback to those who do us wrong, and I know you're trying to find someone to pay back for the election. But it's certainly not us. We did you no harm. We made you, Al. You may not like the fact that Hillary ran for senator, but she deserved it. There would never have been a Clinton-Gore administration, first term or second term, without Hillary. She did everything, Al. You know as well as I do that she has been running this government. She has been running my life from the day I met her at Yale. She was like this ugly duckling of the class and so overwhelmed that a good-looking guy like me took an interest in her. She’s been doing my laundry ever since. After all this, I owed her, Al. I couldn’t say you came first. Face it, you should have won this election in a cakewalk. We gifted you an incredible economy unparalleled in modern times. We raised most of your money. Face it, Al, we did it for you. Remind Tipper of that next time she wants to throw a dish at my official portrait in your residence. Remind her you would have been trounced by Bush if James had not thought up the idea of dropping the Bush DUI story two hours before Ross went on Larry King to endorse Bush. Yes, you almost won it. You could have won it during the recount. But you’re a control freak. I told you, let the henchmen loose, they’ll get the job done. You wanted to rely on Boies and you wanted to listen to Christopher. Christopher hates me and everything I say, you know that, that’s why he left State. If I had listened to Christopher and not done the deal with China, we would have lost in '96. We needed that money to win. How many times did I tell you never, ever play the Republicans' game. They win when you play aboveboard. How many lunches did we have in the Rose Garden when I said to you to just pretend that you're playing their game. I mean, I just told Dan Rather that Bush and all new presidents should watch "High Noon." I said the movie depicts the courage you need to make the tough choices – all alone. You and I know that we spent the past eight years waiting breathlessly for every poll result, basing every decision on the latest numbers. We had no courage. We just had the desire to win and to stay in power. But I played the game. I made it look like I made courageous decisons. Everything is about perception. Look, you and Tipper are happily married, Hillary and I are not. But who out there in America really knows the difference? It’s all about fooling people, and you're terrible at doing that. You can’t, really. You actually believed in all the liberal stuff you talked about, the environment, Internet, lockboxes. Look, I talked the game, too, but when it came to selling out to the chicken producers in Arkansas that polluted almost every lake and river in the state, I did it. I admit it. But does anybody care? Who is going to write about it? Larry Nichols? I believe in you, Al. I'm your friend. I remember my friends. I know you have hurt feelings. I remember when I lost the governorship in 1980, I lost it – drugs, you name it. If it weren’t for Hillary and a desire to not look back, I’d still be working at Bruce’s firm and chasing cocktail waitresses at the North Little Rock Hilton. God, Al, you have done so much in eight years! You and me and Hillary did it. I told you, remember that first day, we were getting in limos to go to the first ball, and I said, "No one will recognize this country when we're finished." I mean, could you imagine any president, at any time, surviving the revelations about me that hypocrite Starr stuck in everyone’s faces? Hell, I not only survived, I went up in the polls! We not only changed the culture and trashed those ridiculous values the Falwell-Billy Graham crowd whine about, we limited the damage this country can ever do in starting a war. Those SOBs in the Pentagon, when we came in, they sat on the largest military machine the world has ever known. Al, you and me, we cut it in half. We stopped all new weapons development. We stalled Star Wars. These jarheads couldn’t even do Desert Storm again. And they won’t. Ever. We created the best economy in the world. Yes, created it! You told me if we cooked the books at the Treasury, if we fixed the unemployment numbers, the inflation rate, we would get caught. OK, then explain to me how oil prices tripled in the past two years, yet no one said a thing about the fact the official inflation rate barely showed it. I told you, once they're hooked on your stuff, no one is going to call the cops. No one is going to say boo, because if they did, it could sink the whole economy. It would be suicide to blow the whistle. Al, you told me – when we agreed to allow China to have America’s nuclear secrets, ballistic missile technology, encryption software, supercomputers – that we would get caught, it wasn’t going to fly with Congress, with the media, with the American public. OK, how do you explain that I’m going out a hero and Hillary a senator? Al, you were wrong. No one cared, no one said a thing. The FBI? The jarheads in the Pentagon? Colin Powell? Dan Rather? No one wanted to rock a boat that had a flag that said "Dow now over 10,000 and rising!" For all your Harvard education, I told you all that matters is the ability to get things done. We got things done by creating history. We don’t wait for history to unfold, we seize upon it. We create it. We mold it. The dialectic works. Al, I need your help, because another great opportunity is coming in the next few years. We can rebuild this party as Bush gets on the wrong side of history, as the economy sinks and foreign policy crises erupt. They’ve called me the Comeback Kid. I want to make a comeback for our party. So what that I brought down the Democratic Party! In 1994, we lost control of Congress for the first time in almost 50 years. This year, we lost everything, the first time in 70 years. Still, everyone is turning to me to save the party. With your help, and Hillary’s, we can do it, Al. I know it. Don’t look back, especially when you can’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Your friend, Bill Clinton PS. I’m not in the least bit worried about Robert Ray. Our guy will continue to run the FBI and the FBI will keep Ray in check. -- Charles L Hamilton - Houston, TX - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Very Best Wishes for Health and Prosperity to You and Yours in the coming New Year. Happy Holidays! Please keep replies trimmed. That includes that annoying advertisement above - chas
