I never liked Bill Clinton -- aside from being a scummy and lousy president, he's also largely responsible for the build-up of terror through the 90s. But, as they say, he's a brilliant politician. More than anything he's concerned about his legacy, and secondarily he wants to get back in the White House; his comments to Larry King last night reflect his mastery of the political field, and should put the seven dwarves vying for the Democrat nomination to shame.
KING: While I have you both here, let me get in just a couple of quick questions about the day's events, starting with President Clinton. What did you make of the killing today of Saddam Hussein's two sons?Emphasis mine. Ok, so what's Clinton up to?CLINTON: Well, I think it's good news for, you know, trying to get the situation under better control there and I'm really happy. I'm happy that, you know, that the military did their job, as they always did, and, do, and, you know, those guys were pretty foolish not to give up, I think, but that's not the first stupid mistake they've made. And I hope that it will give the Iraqi people some sense of reassurance, and I hope it will reduce the number of attacks on our men and women over there who are still working trying to pacify the situation. I think it's got to be on balance, quite good news for us.
[snip]
KING: President, maybe I can get an area where you may disagree. Do you join, President Clinton, your fellow Democrats, in complaining about the portion of the State of the Union address that dealt with nuclear weaponry in Africa?
CLINTON: Well, I have a little different take on it, I think, than either side.
First of all, the White House said -- Mr. Fleischer said -- that on balance they probably shouldn't have put that comment in the speech. What happened, often happens. There was a disagreement between British intelligence and American intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence that said it. And then they said, well, maybe they shouldn't have put it in.
Let me tell you what I know. When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions.
I mean, we're all more sensitive to any possible stocks of chemical and biological weapons. So there's a difference between British -- British intelligence still maintains that they think the nuclear story was true. I don't know what was true, what was false. I thought the White House did the right thing in just saying, Well, we probably shouldn't have said that. And I think we ought to focus on where we are and what the right thing to do for Iraq is now. That's what I think.
[snip]
CLINTON: I think the main thing I want to say to you is, people can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks...
DOLE: That's right.
CLINTON: ... of biological and chemical weapons. We might have destroyed them in '98. We tried to, but we sure as heck didn't know it because we never got to go back in there.
a) He's protecting his legacy. The A-#1 most important thing to Bill Clinton is ensuring that history remembers him as a great president, not a screw-up. Since, as I asserted above, he bears a lot of the responsibility for not knocking out al Qaeda ten years ago, and is also responsible for most of America's dealings with Iraq after the first Gulf War, he doesn't want Bush being called a liar when it comes to WMD. Why? Because Clinton fired lots of cruise missiles into Iraq over the years, and if Bush is lying now then it must mean that Clinton was lying back then.
b) He wants back into the White House; Bill wants Hillary to be the next President of the United States. It's not likely that Hillary is going to run in 2004 (unless Bush really starts to look politlcally vulnerable), and so Bill is working as subtly as he can to undermine the current crop of Democratic wanna-bes. He much prefers a Bush victory to a Democratic victory, because Hillary can't wait till 2012 to run.
c) He's staking out sensible foreign policy ground, just in case. If Bush starts to look weak over the next six months, Hillary will jump into this election and sweep the seven dwarves aside. As popular as Dean is, he can never win the presidency with his crippling pacifistic views (except with regard to Liberia, I suppose), but if Clinton can let the politlcal midgets do the dirty work of tearing Bush down and then have Hillary jump in at the end....
I'd love to know what Terry McAuliffe and the other folks at the DNC are thinking. I don't think they're quite as resigned to losing in 2004, and Clinton keeps sucking the wind from their sails.
In reading your comments, I found myself thinking back to that sadly prescient piece in The Onion about how, with the assumption of the presidency by George Bush, our "long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."
It's interesting to see you trying to blame 9/11 on Clinton. Bush had nearly 9 months in office before September 11, during which time he was warned by Clinton-era holdovers in the national security apparatus of the threat represented by al Qaeda, including specific warnings about their intentions to hijack airliners and use them as bombs.
But you know Bush; he's never had much use for experts, and Clinton-era experts in particular found the administration had its own ideas. Bush's gut told him al Qaeda wasn't much of a problem; it was more important to push tax cuts for the rich and make sure John Ashcroft was on top of that Internet pornography thing.
I have my own problems with Bill Clinton. But if you're going to attack the guy, attack him for his actual failings.
Sure, maybe Clinton only did such a good job at being president because he wanted to get blowjobs from interns, but be honest for a second: Which would you rather have: an immoral bastard with a gift for charm and the ability to actually run things really, really well; or an inept lightweigt who, despite being essentially honest, bumbled his way from one catastrophe to another?
Well, obviously that's a rhetorical question. I know who you prefer. I just have a hard time believing you're so gullible as to actually believe this myth you're telling yourself, about how everything that has gone wrong on the Bush watch was actually the fault of Bill Clinton.
I'll respond briefly. Clinton had 2 or 3 chances (depending on the reports) to take custody of Bin Laden. OBL was on the FBI's most wanted list for a long time, but Clinton refused to take him from Sudan, and earlier from Saudi Arabia (I think). Not only that, but Clinton responded to terrorism as mere law enforcement problems, and because his responses were so weak and ineffectual the terrorists became bolder. They didn't expect 9/11 to bring down the house they way it did, and they certainly didn't expect America to wake up and go kick their butts in Afghanistan. They thought we'd keep bending over and taking it up the rear like we had for the past decade under Clinton.
Clinton didn't run things really well, he just punted all the big problems downfield. Look at California's catastrophic problems to see what happens when you let Democrats control everything for too long. If it hadn't been for the Republican congress that was elected in 1994, America would be one giant California.
Personally, I think the mess in California state politics at the moment isn't so much a Democrat thing; it's a politician thing. Take either party, put them in complete control of all branches of government, with no effective checks and balances, and no real accountability other than to big-money lobbying operations, and guess what: they will become increasingly corrupt until you have a huge mess.
Kind of like what is happening on a national level. Except in that case it's the Republicans who are in charge of everything.
You have no trouble assigning blame to the Democrats in the case of California's politics. And yet you go to great lengths to blame Bush's failures on Bill Clinton. It smacks of a double standard.
I realize everyone does that sort of thing; I know I do. It's just kind of funny when someone else is doing it in such an obvious way.
Well, America isn't in the same type of economic crisis that California is. However, I do agree with you if you're implying that Bush shouldn't be spending money so liberally. It's amazing to me how much money he's spending to undercut the Democrats on their popular issues, and I hope it doesn't end up screwing the country up.
I love Bush's foreign policy, but he really could reign in the spending. Tax cuts are great, but $400 billion for prescription drugs? Good grief.