BOSTON -- An angry President Clinton lashed out at what he called the Republican "politics of personal destruction" in a blistering speech at a $ 1,000-a-plate Democratic National Committee fund-raiser Monday night.
Clinton, low-key all day despite the resignation of close friend Webster Hubbell as associate attorney general, had some of his sharpest words yet on GOP attempts to spotlight the administration's Whitewater problems.
Clinton said the problems the country faces cry out for real debate, "a genuine conflict of ideas."
"Why then are we confronted in this administration with an opposition party that just stands up and says no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no?" he said, slamming his fist on the lectern.
As a Democratic governor who served mostly in times of GOP presidents, Clinton said, "I constantly sought them out, engaged them in debate, offered to work with them . . . I never did them the way they are doing us in Washington, D.C., today. It is wrong. And it is not good for the United States of America."
Clinton said he felt some Republicans had made a bipartisan effort on crime and health care: "But this overriding negative, intensely personal, totally political, devoid-of-principle attack is not good for the country and is inconsistent with the tradition of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt."
DNC Chairman David Wilhelm and John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, both Democratic senators from Massachusetts, preceded Clinton and also had strong words for the GOP.
Kerry said he was "amused" Republicans seemed to choose Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., as "their spokesman on ethics. . . . I guess Bob Packwood was busy."
