Different Clinton, different opinion of elites.

On the one hand, Hillary Clinton, who …

declined this morning to name a single economist who backs her call for a gas tax suspension.

“I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,” Clinton said in an exclusive appearance on a special edition of “This Week” from Indianapolis.

In light of fierce criticism from economic experts, Clinton said, “We’ve been, for the last seven years, seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven’t worked well for the middle class and hard-working Americans. … I know if we get it right, if we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.”

On the other hand, candidate Bill Clinton did care what elites thought about his economic plan.  This 1992 Clinton campaign ad touted: “Bill Clinton’s economic plan, endorsed by over 600 economists including ten Nobel Prize winers as the best hope for reviving the nation’s economy.”

Great line by our friend Walter Shapiro in Salon (via Instapundit):

At 61, Bill Clinton — even though he is a decade younger than John McCain — makes more self-deprecating comments about age than anyone this side of Phyllis Diller.

Phyllis Diller — much funnier than the punchline we would have gone for, George Burns. Then again, we think it’s hilarious when Arlen Specter says, “I looked at my birth certificate recently and I decided not to let a little thing like that bother me because it happened so long ago.’”

There’s Diller. And then there’s duller.

UPDATE: What would Phyllis Diller look like if she got a face lift to look younger?

Uh-oh. Looks like Hillary Clinton’s involved in another trade war. But this time her opponent is not Mark Penn. It’s her husband.

And it’s all over that most American of businesses, Harley-Davidson.

Here’s today’s Harriburg Patriot-News:

Mentioning job cuts at the Harley-Davidson plant and a campaign stop at Central Market House in 1992 with her husband, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did her best to connect with potential voters at a rally in downtown York on Saturday….

She mentioned the 300 or so job cuts Harley-Davidson announced at its York plant last week and the job cuts announced late last year at Hershey.

Clinton promised the crowd, where several union signs were being held, that she would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and take a time-out before entering into new trade agreements.

It’s unclear whether such a move would do more good or harm to Harley and Hershey workers. Both companies have said in recent years that they are looking to beef up sales of their American-made products to countries in Asia to offset declining sales in the United States.

For example, Harley-Davidson’s first quarter earnings show sales of its motorcycles in the United States declined by about 12 percent, while its Asia sales showed growth.

Which, as delicious irony would have it, was foreshadowed by President Bill Clinton.
Here’s the November 11, 1999 New York Times:

President Clinton today saluted a much-exported American icon, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, in an effort to prepare the political ground for two high-stakes trade negotiations that are already touching off raucous debate in Washington and around the country.

As Mr. Clinton donned a leather Harley-Davidson jacket at the company’s factory in York and mused about the possibility of becoming a biker at the end of his presidency, half of his economic team was in Beijing in a last-ditch effort to strike a deal with China that could vastly open the market for American producers.

While Mr. Clinton said nothing about the tense talks, Harley-Davidson was a fitting backdrop: It has had huge sales success in Japan, home ground for its archrival Honda, but it remains barred from the Chinese market.

In a small meeting with workers here, and then a campaign-style speech in front of the factory’s 2,700 workers, Mr. Clinton spent much of the day trying to build support for America’s position at the round of global trade negotiations that start in Seattle at the end of this month.

… he offered a series of arguments about why trade helps American workers and consumers, and he cited Harley-Davidson, which exports 66,000 cycles a year. ‘’In spite of all those numbers,'’ Mr. Clinton said, ‘’there’s more debate on whether trade is good for us now than there was in 1992.'’

And it looks like there’s even more debate nine years later, between the Clintons themselves. In this trade war, we’ll side with Clinton — Bill Clinton.

Memo to Hillary Clinton: We know you’re ahead in Pennsylvania and Barack Obama is self-destructing. Things are looking good for a Tuesday win.

Still, during these final few days, you might want to keep a close eye on Bill Clinton. In particular, leave him out of the scheduling meetings. No telling which Pennsylvania town he’ll want to campaign in.

The new issue of the Weekly Standard reminds us that this week marks the fifth anniversary of the death in a Humvee accident in Iraq of the writer Michael Kelly.

Here’s one way to remember Michael Kelly — by re-running the greatest column he ever wrote, and one of the most legendary and powerful op-eds in modern-day print journalism.  Just over ten years ago.  774 words that appeared in the Washington Post on Feb. 4, 1998, page A19, when Kelly was a senior writer for National Journal:

I believe the president. I have always believed him. I believed him when he said he had never been drafted in the Vietnam War and I believed him when he said he had forgotten to mention that he had been drafted in the Vietnam War. I believed him when he said he hadn’t had sex with Gennifer Flowers and I believe him now, when he reportedly says he did.

I believe the president did not rent out the Lincoln Bedroom, did not sell access to himself and the vice president to hundreds of well-heeled special pleaders and did not supervise the largest, most systematic money-laundering operation in campaign finance history, collecting more than $ 3 million in illegal and improper donations. I believe that Charlie Trie and James Riady were motivated by nothing but patriotism for their adopted country.

I believed Vice President Gore when he said that he had made dunning calls to political contributors “on a few occasions” from his White House office, and I believed him when he said that, actually, “a few” meant 46. I believe in no controlling legal authority.

I believe Bruce Babbitt when he says that the $ 286,000 contributed to the DNC by Indian tribes opposed to granting a casino license to rival tribes had nothing to do with his denial of the license. I believed the secretary when he said that he had not been instructed in this matter by then-White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes. I believed him when he said later that he had told lobbyist and friend Paul Eckstein that Ickes had told him to move on the casino decision, but that he had been lying to Eckstein. I agree with the secretary that it is an outrage that anyone would question his integrity.

I believe in the Clinton Standard of adherence to the nation’s campaign finance and bribery laws, enunciated by the president on March 7, 1997: “I don’t believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I had changed government policy solely because of a contribution.” I note with approval the use of the word “evidence” and also the use of the word “solely.” I believe that it is proper to change government policy to address the concerns of people who have given the president money, as long as nobody can find evidence of this being the sole reason.

I believe the president has lived up to his promise to preside over the most ethical administration in American history. I believe that indicted former agriculture secretary Mike Espy did not accept $ 35,000 in illegal favors from Tyson Foods and other regulated businesses. I believe that indicted former housing secretary Henry Cisneros did not lie to the FBI and tell others to lie to cover up $ 250,000 in blackmail payments to his former mistress. I believe that convicted former associate attorney general Webster Hubbell was not involved in the obstruction of justice when the president’s minions arranged for Hubbell to receive $ 400,000 in sweetheart consulting deals at a time when he was reneging on his promise to cooperate with Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation.

I believe Paula Jones is a cheap tramp who was asking for it. I believe Kathleen Willey is a cheap tramp who was asking for it. I believe Monica Lewinsky is a cheap tramp who was asking for it.

I believe Lewinsky was fantasizing in her 20 hours of taped conversation in which she reportedly detailed her sexual relationship with the president and begged Linda Tripp to join her in lying about the relationship. I believe that any gifts, correspondence, telephone calls and the 37 post-employment White House visits that may have passed between Lewinsky and the president are evidence only of a platonic relationship; such innocent intimate friendships are quite common between middle-aged married men and young single women, and also between presidents of the United States and White House interns.

I see nothing suspicious in the report that the president’s intimate, Vernon Jordan, arranged a $ 40,000-per-year job for Lewinsky shortly after she signed but before she filed an affidavit saying she had not had sex with the president. Nor do I read anything into the fact that the ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, visited Lewinsky at the Watergate to offer her a job. I believe the instructions Lewinsky gave Tripp informing her on how to properly perjure herself in the Willey matter simply wrote themselves.

I believe that The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS and NPR are all part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Especially NPR.

From the Washington Post’s review of the new Rolling Stones movie “Shine A Light”:

Even Bill Clinton, who bought a block of seats for one of the two shows, hobnobs obsequiously with the band before the show. We can almost see the limelight handover, as the former leader of the free world defers to the likes of Jagger, Keith Richards and the rest.
…

Richards may be the other half of the songwriting brain trust but in the Stones family, he’s the eldest kid, at best. (”Hey Clinton, I’m feeling Bushed,” he jokes like a mischievous schoolboy to Wood, as the former president hovers in the background.)

Boy, sounds like you just can’t shake the guy — he’s everywhere!

San Francisco Chronicle today:

The Bill Clinton who met privately with California’s superdelegates at last weekend’s state convention was a far cry from the congenial former president who afterward publicly urged fellow Democrats to “chill out” over the race between his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barack Obama.

In fact, before his speech Clinton had one of his famous meltdowns Sunday, blasting away at former presidential contender Bill Richardson for having endorsed Obama, the media and the entire nomination process….

“Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that,” a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted.

The former president then went on a tirade that ran from the media’s unfair treatment of Hillary to questions about the fairness of the votes in state caucuses that voted for Obama. It ended with him asking delegates to imagine what the reaction would be if Obama was trailing by just 1 percent and people were telling him to drop out.

Sports Illustrated, in happier times:

Bill Clinton asserted this in Pennsylvania today:

“If we led the world to the moon, we ought to be able to lead the world to clean coal.  I know a certain candidate who is absolutely committed to that.”

Clean coal?  Clinton?  Pennsylvania?  Better not tell these folks …

It’s safe to say that relations between the Clintons and the Sheryl Crows and the Sinbads were much warmer during the ’90s than they are today.

For example, here’s Bill Clinton in January 1999:

“I want to say a special word of thanks, as Hillary did, to Sheryl Crow, who is a good friend, a good Democrat, and an unbelievable artist. And she’s getting better every single year — unbelievable.”

Unbelievable — delicious word choice.

And here’s Bill Clinton in January 1995:

“When I came before I had Sinbad with me as the warmup act. And I thought that was responsible for the crowd.”

See — Sinbad is funny.  But a far more poignant memory of the ’90s may be Hillary Clinton’s wardrobe.

An alert Extreme Mortman reader watched the YouTube video of CBS’ report on Hillary’s 1996 Bosnia visit …

… and had a eureka moment.  Our correspondent noted specifically what Hillary was wearing 12 years ago, betting the farm that, based on the video evidence, Hillary was wearing a shirt from The Black Dog in Martha’s Vineyard.

Hmmmm, The Black Dog, The Black Dog — sounds familiar.  Where have we heard that before?

Ah, yes.  From President Clinton’s answers to questions posed by the House Judiciary Committee about the Monica Lewinsky scandal:

In my deposition in the Jones case, I testified that I “certainly … could have” given Ms. Lewinsky a hat pin and that I gave her “something” from the Black Dog. Dep. at 75-76. In my grand jury testimony, I indicated that in late December 1997, I gave Ms. Lewinsky a Canadian marble bear’s head carving, a Rockettes blanket, some kind of pin, and a bag (perhaps from the Black Dog) to hold these objects.

Or, as a Washington Post timeline has it:

Early September [1997]: Currie passes on to Lewinsky several items from the Black Dog restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard as gifts from the president.

Dec. 28 [1997]: Lewinsky meets with Clinton in Oval Office. In adjoining study, Clinton gives her several Christmas presents, including a stuffed animal from the Black Dog, chocolates and a pair of joke sunglasses. They kiss.

Smoooooth.  Gifts from The Black Dog — gets ‘em every time.