Bill Clinton Try to Re-Frame the Story

¶ … Bill Clinton try to re-frame the story of his extra-Marital affair during the 1992 campaign?

When Gennifer Flowers came forward in 1992 to claim she had an affair with Bill Clinton while he was Governor of Arkansas -- what Clinton's staff would term the first of several "bimbo eruptions" -- Clinton managed to reframe the story by immediately giving two interviews, with "60 Minutes" and The Washington Post. In both cases, Clinton insisted on being jointly interviewed with his wife Hillary. The implication seemed to be that, if this man's wife knew he was "a hard dog to keep on the porch" and could still forgive him, then his adultery was hardly a matter of great concern for voters.

What do we mean when we say that Americans are "fair-weather voters?"?

Fair-weather voters are only likely to turn up at the polls if the weather is good. Voting to them as a civic duty does not mean enough to them that they would leave the house in the rain to do it. The notion could also be extended to various non-meteorological adverse conditions, where fair-weather voters won't bother to go to the polls if it entails a lot of driving or traffic or a long wait in line, and so on.

3. What has been the long-term effect of the "Southern Strategy" on the Republican Party?

The long-term effect of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" on the Republican Party has been to alienate the vast majority of African-American voters, while managing to enroll large numbers of white Southerners in a political party that first rose to prominence with Abraham Lincoln. This has also caused the Republicans to reflect the idiosyncratic concerns of white Southerners.

4. How would you have dealt with the First Amendment issues involved in the Baby Messiah case?

The original name change order for Baby Messiah was in clear violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause -- the magistrate who made the order stated outright that her reasons came from personal religious belief. Additionally, I would have posed the question to Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer whether they concurred with the Tennessee magistrate that the only person who had "earned" the title of "Messiah" was Jesus Christ.

5. Brown v. Board of Education made racial segregation unconstitutional. Why was public school policy in Kensas a matter of interest to the federal government?