Sometimes, when I think about the eight years Bill Clinton was president, I get so sad. He wasn't perfect, but a quick rundown and compare of "Major Problems Caused or Faced While President" between Bill and our current "leader" really gets me in the gut.
Last week, Mr. Clinton was on the Daily Show. I didn't get to watch it until this weekend, when I was cleaning out the old TiVo (much more fun than, say, cleaning out the fridge). It was as excellent as every episode of the Daily Show always is. But the real fun was yet to come, when Bill appeared on FOX News in an interview with Chris Wallace.
FOX News gives me hives, so I didn't watch it live, but of course it's been all over the news. Chris Wallace is now saying, asshat that he is, is acting all confused as to why Bill got so riled up in his answer, claiming, "All I did was ask him whether he felt he did enough to connect the dots and go after Al Qaeda."
Actually, CHRIS, I am looking at the transcript right now. What you actually did was ask the world's longest question. You started by saying this was a question that many viewers e-mailed into you: "Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President?" Then you highlight claims made in the book The Looming Tower, which says that Bin Laden was talking shit about the U.S. back in 1993, and you wondered why, after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, we didn't strike back. You end with: "[B]ut the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?" That seems to me like a pretty confrontational way to ask that question, Judgy McBlamey.
Clinton goes right after him, though, bless his heart. He points out that while he will answer all of the questions that Wallace smashed in there, he wants to note that he is being asked this on FOX news. He goes on to acknowledge that he tried and failed to get Bin Laden, and calls Wallace out for doing "FOX's bidding" and doing "a nice little conservative hit job on" him. Wallace tried to make out like Clinton is not answering his questions. This brings us to my favorite part of the interview, which I will quote in full, because it's awesomeness cannot be contained by summary. My comments are in brackets.
Clinton: It was a perfectly legitimate question but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked: 'Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole? I want to know how many you asked: Why did you fire Dick Clarke?' I want to know . . . [Bring it, sir!]
Wallace: We asked . . .
Clinton: . . .
Wallace: Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday sir?
Clinton: I don’t believe you ask them that. [Ohhhh, SNAP!]
Wallace: We ask plenty of questions of . . .
Clinton: You didn’t ask that did you? Tell the truth.
Wallace: About the USS Cole?
Clinton: Tell the truth. [Do it.]
Wallace: I . . . with Iraq and Afghanistan there’s plenty of stuff to ask.
Clinton: Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers for supporting my work on climate change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about . . .
Wallace: <laughs> [Yeah, laugh it up, jackass.]
Clinton: You said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion dollars plus over three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.
No, they DON'T CARE. I love you. There's enough fodder here for a series of posts - not just the rest of the interview, which continues to be super, but also the reporting on said interview in the conservative press, which is infuriating, or the things he says in the interview about the administration's lack of focus on Afghanistan, or on Bill's Global Initiative, which has potential.
I think the thing I like best about this, besides the calling out of FOX, is that Bill admits he failed. I'll grant you that the consequences to him for admitting this failure are not as great as they would be for, say, a current President. But still, he admits that he tried and failed. SOMEONE could learn a lesson from that, surely.
Ah, Clinton. He makes an excellent point. Also, wasn't Bush president for nearly a year before 9/11, and didn't he also know about the Cole that whole time? Yes, he did.
Also, I think it's a little silly to ask Clinton this. I mean of course NOW he wishes he'd done something, though I'm not sure what Chris would like him to have done, since even all out war has proved ineffective.
Regarding Clintonian regret, in the recent New Yorker profile he seems most sad about fucking up the Rwandan genocide. He's gone there and apologized, and they seem to really appreciate it, they said he was the only world leader to apologize for not stopping it. He doesn't say the same things about the Cole/Al Qaeda. I think the difference is that Clinton knew what was happening in Rwanda, and knowingly did nothing (I think it was a Congress issue - like he felt blocked by them, I don't remember exactly), versus he didn't know that not responding to the Cole would result in, say, a terrorist attack on America, two wars, and the reelection of Bush. It's hard to think about, but can you imagine if Clinton found out that Al Qaeda was behind the Cole, then went INTO Afghanistan to try to find and kill those responsible? That would have been judged insane, I bet. (boy, what an alternative timeline, though)
Posted by: Ro | September 25, 2006 at 10:46 AM
It totally would have been insane, which I think is where his whole "I did everything I felt I could responsibly do" thing comes from. He couldn't responsible respond to Cole by bombing the shit of Afghanistan, people would not have liked that one bit. (In addition to a lack of being able to foresee the consequences of not respond, and additionally, as you point out, bombing them not solving the problem anyhow.)
I can't believe he is the only world leader who apologized to Rwanda. I love him even more now.
Posted by: Ta | September 25, 2006 at 02:04 PM
Yes, he was. I am, as I said, kind of conflicted about him after reading the profile. He isn't very likeable, which was surprising. But he's so extremely smart. Oddly, that's something I didn't really know while he was president. That wasn't part of the myth of him, or whatever. He was all Southern himbo, right? I guess maybe before he was that he was known for being really smart and knowing everything and everyone. Which is is, and does. I'm rambling.
Posted by: Ro | September 25, 2006 at 03:54 PM