November 2, 2007 9:41AM 

# Tales from the Clinton Dynasty 

By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) 

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Nina Burleigh, who covered the Clinton White House for *Time* and [who once said](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/01/01/ED30719.DTL) of President Clinton, “I’d be happy to give him \[oral sex\] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal,” reviews a new biography of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the *Washington Post*. [She writes](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/31/AR2007103103017.html), “The details are riveting as ever. Who can get enough of POTUS sweating on the phone at 2 a.m. with a love-addled 24-year-old woman, placating her with job promises, knowing his world is about to explode as surely as a Sudanese powdered-milk factory?”

It seems a cavalier way to refer to the [bombing of a factory in a poor country](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/08/21/wemb21.html), a factory that was not in fact making nerve gas, and a bombing that happened suddenly, just three days after Clinton’s traumatic speech to the nation about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. [Critics](http://www.salon.com/news/1998/08/21newsc.html) [suggested](http://www.salon.com/news/1998/09/23news.html) that he wanted to [change the subject](http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york-issueprint112901.html) on the front pages. Bombings aren’t funny, and Burleigh’s jest does nothing to put to rest the cynical, “[Wag the Dog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog)” interpretation of Clinton’s action.

##### Related Tags 

[Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) 

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