Is Bill Clinton picking up PR tips from the tobacco industry he professes to despise? That might explain the addition last September of Guy Smith to the White House impeachment war room. Smith is a one-time journalist and public relations expert, kind of a Sid Blumenthal and James Carville rolled into one. But he didn't hone his skills as a Democratic hellraiser; he got his training at Philip Morris.
As an executive with the tobacco giant from 1985 to 1993, Smith was a leader in the public relations battles waged against anti-smoking advocates. Well before the president started massaging black voters and cracking open the pinata in his State of the Union address, Smith had the course plotted. Smith urged his Philip Morris colleagues to "emphasize that smoking restrictions . . . place an extra burden on minorities and poor people." He advocated a campaign "to make Philip Morris U.S.A. leaders more visible and accessible to the public." And, presaging Clinton's dependency strategy, Smith stated, "The job now is to . . . get people . . . to not only like us, but to actively support us because they feel that they need us."
Sounds an awful lot like Bill Clinton's political redemption strategy. Too bad the president didn't come with a surgeon general's warning.