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Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton is the Governor of Arkansas and Democratic presidential nominee in the campaign's alternate 1992, whose candidacy is wrecked by a surveillance scandal in Dahlonega, Georgia that the public blames on the Paranatural Incident Task Force. He is a fictional version of the real politician, written as a character in the show's alternate history; nothing here describes the real person.
Type NPC (fictionalized historical figure; never appears on screen)
Aliases Clinton; Gov. Clinton; William Clinton
Affiliation Democratic Party; Governor of Arkansas
Status Alive; lost the 1992 election
First appearance Mentioned from Appalachia 01; never seen

Description

Clinton never appears in a scene. He exists as a newspaper item, a press conference, a set of leaked Polaroids, a late-night monologue and a very long running joke. For the full account of the affair, see Clinton Surveillance Scandal. (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 07, Walkers 01)

History

The Things in Appalachia

On the Dahlonega Times page that carries the grainy Bigfoot photograph sending the team to Georgia, below the fold, is a notice that Clinton will give a big campaign speech in Atlanta in a couple of days. (Appalachia 01)

In the same session the Biz accepts a secret job, through a sweepstakes mailing he recognizes as a KGB front, to hide a camera and microphone in Room 111 of the Smith Hotel in Dahlonega. He installs them alone, facing the bed, in a room staged with wine and chocolates and booked by an armed, military-looking man under mismatched names. (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 02)

Days later Donald McManley asks the team whether they have seen the news. A Georgia State Police official has held a press conference claiming the FBI is in Dahlonega surveilling presidential candidate Bill Clinton, and that fingerprints on something "recovered from the scene" match an unnamed FBI agent. Big Bill pages everyone, berates Andrew Howard by phone, and says he will brief the President and fly down. (Appalachia 07)

Quote

"We're not surveilling Bill Clinton. We're surveilling dead Chewbacca." (Rita as Andrew Howard, Appalachia 07)

The team spends the next day dodging reporters. A Fox 5 Atlanta crew recognizes Andrew outside the Spud Hut plant and asks him on live television about the "Bill Clinton wiretap" and whether it is "the next Watergate". He answers "Nothing" and walks off, and the clip of him turning back, sweating, to say "Thank you for your time again" is replayed about every ten minutes. Inside, Jan Martense asks whether they were spying on the candidate; Kurt answers "oddly enough, no". (Appalachia 08)

Unrecorded session

The end of the Georgia case, Appalachia 10, was never recorded. By the start of Walkers 01, Clinton had been photographed in a Georgia hotel room, the Polaroids had leaked, the official story put the surveillance on Jan Martense, and the Georgia State Police had named the Biz and recovered his night-vision goggles from a rose bush.

The Walkers in Skin

The scandal makes the Biz "the most hated cop in America". The FBI's line is that the Bureau had nothing to do with it, and it sends him onto David Letterman's show to say so. Letterman's monologue recaps the story ("President Bush's FBI was caught surveilling Governor Clinton in a hotel room in Georgia. Or did they?") and adds that the allegations "hit a lot harder when there's Polaroids". On the couch the Biz says that none of the team knew Clinton was in town, and jokes coyly that he was in Dahlonega "having an affair with Bill Clinton". Letterman then reveals something the Biz did not know: the Polaroids were taken with a Russian camera. (Walkers 01)

Quote

"Maybe he's a Republican." (Ezra as the Biz, asked why Jan Martense would surveil Clinton, Walkers 01)

In the Oval Office, George H. W. Bush tells Andrew he expects to lose to Clinton within days, and that an ape-man criminal surveilling Clinton in the same Georgia town as the task force is not coincidence but "enemy action". By the end of the session, polling since what Andre calls "the double scandal" has Ross Perot above 45 percent. (Walkers 01)

In Utah the Biz is recognized everywhere: by FBI agent Carl Gardner ("the fella who spied on Clinton... had it coming"), by Bigelow's security, and by the bartender Maggie. Bigelow, who has researched the team, says the Clinton affair "didn't even make the list" of interesting stories about them. (Walkers 02, Walkers 03)

Quote

"I don't think Bill Clinton would be caught dead in Ballard, Utah." (Andre as Maggie, Walkers 03)

Clinton loses. Andre's summary of the alternate election is that Perot "just needed two October surprises" and one event supplied both: the incumbent was caught spying on a challenger who was having a sex scandal, "Watergate and Monica Lewinsky at the same time". (Walkers 08, Walkers 09)

Afterwards

The task force carries the blame. The Biz is "the guy who everyone blames the Bill Clinton thing on"; Perot regards the unit as Bush's instrument against political enemies; and Daniel Webster arrives in Radford knowing the Biz as the man "busted for taking pictures of the presidential candidate in a hotel room". Dante's comment at the table is that "the Bill Clinton thing was real". (Roulet Estate 02, Radford Horrors 02)

The first people to interrogate the Biz in Russia, the ones who kicked him, asked about Bill Clinton. They were gone by April 1993, replaced by captors interested only in aliens. (Radford Horrors 01)

Who took the pictures

The episodes never show the photographs being taken, and the session that closed the Georgia case was not recorded.

  • The public version, and the FBI's, puts the surveillance on Jan Martense. (Walkers 01)
  • The Biz did plant a camera in Room 111 for what Andre describes as a KGB front, and Letterman's Polaroids came from a Russian camera. Dante's table joke when the Biz has no bug left for Jan is that he used "them all up on Clinton". (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 08, Walkers 01)
  • When the story first breaks, the Biz suggests that someone is trying to "fake some kind of Watergate-type deal", and Kurt agrees that a secret task force would be the ideal group of federal agents to pin it on. (Appalachia 07)
  • It is never established who booked Room 111.

Trivia

  • Kurt, long out of the country, does not know who Bill Clinton is; Andre reminded the table that it was October 1992. (Appalachia 07)
  • Table theories about Clinton include that he is the Ape Man's father, that he is raising a clone army, and that "the sex scandals were a cover-up for Scanners". (Appalachia 08)
  • After the portal under the mines, the Biz wished the state police would come and look: "This is way weirder than Bill Clinton." (Appalachia 09)
  • Ezra's joke about the Russians who had prepared for a Clinton presidency: "That's the Bill Clinton team. They're in Siberia right now". (Radford Horrors 01)

Appearances

Mentioned only.