Inside Politics

Bill’s bullying

Lucianne Goldberg wonders why no one has mentioned the “trailer-trash socks,” which revealed some skin from former President Bill Clinton in his bombastic weekend interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace.

Talk-radio hosts noticed other things, though, and have suggested that Mr. Wallace file “assault and battery” charges against Mr. Clinton, who repeatedly poked at Mr. Wallace and his notes.

William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, however, suspects that the Clintonian bluster was a studied dramatic device, with 2008 political implications involving Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and former vice-presidential nominee John Edwards.

“If the Bush-Rove war-on-terror offensive stalls out this week (and much of the media is committed to making this happen), and Democrats do well in November, Bill Clinton can take credit, at a crucial moment, for discrediting the terror issue as a mere political ploy, and showing Democrats how ‘to fight back’ and how ‘to stand up to the right-wing propaganda machine’ (in the words of Howard Dean),” Mr. Kristol wrote yesterday.

“Bill Clinton has the entire left wing of the Democratic party rallying to him. Some of this solidarity can presumably be transferred to Hillary. And the dangerous move of the left-wing of the party toward Gore and Edwards, and their rise in national and Iowa polls respectively, can perhaps be stopped.”

“Clinton wants to make it incorrect, or at least impolite, to criticize his record on terror … Bullying and intimidation sometimes work. Clinton has used both effectively in the past,” Mr. Kristol said. “Now he wants to put out of bounds certain perfectly legitimate and straight-forward questions. Can we debate which party — based on their practice when in power — can better deal with the jihadist/terror threat? No, according to Clinton. That’s illegitimate right-wing propaganda.”

Slur-free

Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican, yesterday denounced claims from Ken Shelton, a former college football teammate, that he frequently used a racial slur to refer to black people.

Mr. Shelton, who is white, works as a radiologist in North Carolina and is founder of Tobacco Free for Life, a grass-roots anti-smoking group. He also is a donor to Democratic candidates. Mr. Shelton told the online journal Salon that Mr. Allen, a former University of Virginia quarterback, used the “N-word on a regular basis” during the 1970s.

“The story and his comments and assertions in there are completely false,” Mr. Allen told Associated Press yesterday. “I don’t remember ever using that word, and it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary.”

Doug Jones, a former roommate of Mr. Shelton at Virginia, backed the lawmaker.

“I never heard George Allen use any racially disparaging word, nor did I ever witness or hear about him acting in a racially insensitive manner,” Mr. Jones said.

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