What happened
Kathleen Willey’s controversial new book Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton, in which the former White House Aide accuses the Clintons and their associates of threatening and harassing her, hit bookstores on Nov. 6. In Target, Willey—who accused Bill Clinton of groping her when they worked together in the Oval Office—suggests that the Clintons may have had something to do with the death of her husband and two cats, and the theft of her manuscript, among other things.
What the commetators said
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It’s pretty hard to take Willey’s accusations seriously, said Lenore Skenazy in The New York Sun. “If she’s lying—or paranoid—the Clintons are nothing less than selling points.” It also doesn’t help her “credibility that the company publishing her book” also “sells mouse pads featuring a cartoon of Senator Clinton banging her fist on a lemonade stand and spilling the children’s product.” Then there’s the endorsement “blurb by Ann Coulter.”
Not so fast, said Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post’s blog The Trail. “Willey is hardly a charter member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, having been a Democrat and Clinton supporter with enough of a connection to talk her way into the White House.” But her book is a “reminder” that the Clinton scandals of the ’90s are “still lurking out there.” And that “stuff” is “like toxic waste. It isn’t biodegradable. The only way for the American public to get rid of it permanently is to bury it at Yucca Mountain. Or just ignore it.”
Willey’s charges could be “dismissed by some people as part of a political vendetta against the Clintons,” said Jeff Crouere in the blog BayouBuzz.com. But “if the Clintons return to Washington D.C., controversy, scandal and turmoil will follow them. It has happened throughout their political career.” The Bush administration made a lot of mistakes. But “is the country really ready for such drama and controversy to return to the Oval Office? I don’t think this is the change of course the country is looking for in the 2008 elections.”
