HOW TO BE AN ORIGINAL THINKER | 2004-11-13
Bill Clinton is far and away the greatest fund-raiser the Democrats have. He could have given the Massachusetts liberal Kerry a big boost by being a visible Southerner.
Bill got heart trouble. Hillary disappeared.
If you spent your life in politics as I did, you tend to be a bit suspicious. If you insist, as I did, that the last thing Bill and Hillary wanted was the election of Kerry and especially of his running-mate John Edwards. I was astonished that the Augusta Chronicle published two of my Op-Eds on this subject.
This astonished me. I lost count of the number of big-time Op-Eds I wrote for others that got published, but nobody publishes one under my name.
For some reason, I'm not considered respectable.
But this one was so unique and so obviously true that the Augusta Chronicle had the guts to publish it under my name. I thank them and I congratulate them. I am surprised they are still in business.
As soon as the election was over, I heard a commentator announce the exact same point. Like so many people who repeat what I said long before, he got credit for a novel and ingenious idea.
My wife used to get terribly upset at this, bless her. But I told her, "My ideas were made to be stolen. That's the only way to get them out."