CLINTON ON CHRIS WALLACE: “You read the transcript yesterday. You saw the clip. Now, you’ve seen the whole interview.”
Actually, I was on a weekend trip to the mountains with family (rainy but nice) and didn’t see the interview. But the clip is online here.
A better response for Clinton would seem to have been something like this: (Indulgent smile with slight look of boyish contrition, not carried to the lip-biting level) “Well, I admit we made some mistakes in the 1990s, and I’m sure President Bush has made some too. But the real question is where we go from here, and . . . ”
He knows that, too, I suspect. So why did he respond the way he did?
UPDATE: Some history, here and here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Clinton and bin Laden and the perils of citing Richard Clarke: “even a casual reading of Clarke’s book reveals that it was one of the more important sources for ‘The Path To 9/11,’ the ABC miniseries that so irritated the Clintonites. For that reason and many others, I wouldn’t want more people reading Clarke’s book if I were Clinton.”
MORE: Still more history here. Clinton is apparently forgetting his own Administration’s public positions, including those taken in the 1998 indictment of Osama bin Laden. Once again, I think his reaction was very unwise, and likely to harm Democratic prospects this fall.
MORE STILL: A different take on what Clinton was about:
What’s struck me most, in the context of these recent events, is just how extremely *protective* of Clinton liberals (e.g. blogs & blog commenters) have become. This isn’t surprising, and it’s not a negative thing per se: cf. the protectiveness of Bush on the right, especially when he’s being assailed (unfairly & dishonestly, in their view) by the media. The comparison is illuminating, of course, because Bush does very little public self-defending against his harshest critics (and never complains of being ‘victimized’ by the media)– though of course commenters on the right do that for him. Clinton, with these recent actions, is (I think) trying to tap into a similar dynamic– e.g. trying to tap into the (surprising– and surprisingly mainstream) surge of protectiveness & feeling for him during the impeachment saga. (And lest we forget, that was the origin of moveon.org, wasn’t it.) . . .
I do think it’s likely that his latest public acts are a kind of strategic gamble, specifically directed at the left (rallying it for Hillary, who can then do what she needs to do to convince the center)– (and the left is eating it up aren’t they, he’s playing them like a piano)— more likely than that this last outburst was an ‘accident’ (esp. when the questioning was *so* to be expected– he himself practically *asked* for it, in making such a big deal of the 9/11 movie).
Hmm.