Did you catch Clinton on the Daily Show last week? It was nice. Good humoured. Nice to hear him chat about his initiatives, and nice to hear him still with enough footwork to avoid the “will Hilary run?” questions artfully.
But did you catch him on the weekend, interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday? I did not, since I’ve largely given up on TV news and related programs. The signal to noise ratio is just terrible. But this was good! The news is running all around the web. Apparently he was full of fire in response to questions about the hunt for Bin Laden and others on his watch. Here’s part of a transcript from Crooks and Liars:
CW: Do you think you did enough, sir?
WJC: No, because I didn’t get him.
CW: Right…
WJC: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including
all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for
trying. They had eight months to try and they didn’t. I tried. So I tried
and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and
the best guy in the country: Dick Clarke.So you did FOX’s bidding on this show. You did you nice little conservative hit job on me. But what I want to know..
CW: Now wait a minute, sir…
WJC: [..]
CW: I asked a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?
WJC: It was a perfectly legitimate question. But I want to know how many
people in the Bush administration you’ve 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…CW: We asked…
WJC: [..]
CW: Do you ever watch FOX News Sunday, sir?
WJC: I don’t believe you ask them that.
CW: We ask plenty of questions of…
WJC: You didn’t ask that, did you? Tell the truth.
CW: About the USS Cole?
WJC: Tell the truth…
CW: I…with Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s plenty of stuff to ask.
WJC: 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…
CW: [laughs]
WJC: You said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion plus over three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.
CW: But, President Clinton…
WJC: [..]
CW: We were going to ask half the [interview time] about it. I didn’t think this was going to set you off on such a tear.
WJC: It set me off on such a tear because you didn’t formulate it in an honest way and you people ask me questions you don’t ask the other side.
Wow….. actual unfiltered sense on TV! That’s pretty rare indeed. A bit more:
CW: Can I ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative?
WJC: You can.
CW: I always intended to, sir.
WJC: No, you intended to move your bones by doing this first. But I don’t mind people asking me. I actually talked to the 9/11 Commission for four hours and I told them the mistakes I thought I made. And I urged them to make those mistakes public because I thought none of us had been perfect. But instead of anybody talking about those things. I always get these clever little political…where they ask me one-sided question. It always comes from one source. And so…
CW: [..]
WJC: And so…
CW: I just want to ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative, but what’s
the source? You seem upset…WJC: I am upset because…
CW: …and all I can say is, I’m asking you in good faith because it’s on people’s minds, sir. And I wasn’t…
WJC: There’s a reason it’s on people’s minds. That’s the point I’m trying to make. There’s a reason it’s on people’s minds because they’ve done a serious disinformation campaign to create that impression. This country only has one person who has worked against terror…[since] under Reagan. Only one: Richard Clarke. And all I’d say [to] anybody who wonders whether we did wrong or right; anybody who wants to see what everybody else did, read his book. The people on my political right who say I didn’t do enough, spent the whole time I was president saying ‘Why is he so obsessed with Bin Laden?’ And that was ‘Wag the Dog’ when he tried to kill him. My Republican Secretary of Defense, – and I think I’m the only person since WWII to have a Secretary of Defense from the opposition party – Richard Clarke, and all the intelligence people said that I ordered a vigorous attempt to get Osama Bin Laden and came closer apparently than anybody has since.
CW: All right…
WJC: And you guys try to create the opposite impression when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s findings and you know it’s not true. It’s just not true. And all this business about Somalia – the same people who criticized me about Somalia were demanding I leave the next day. Same exact crowd.
CW: One of the…
WJC: So if you’re going to do this, for God’s sake, follow the same standards for everybody.
You can go and read the rest. Apparently there’s a YouTube link somewhere too.
Ok, let’s stop joking now. Can we have him back? I’d settle for even a B-movie actor to play a real president at this point. Yeah, yeah, I know.
-cvj
Jon,
Well said. It is actually incredible to believe that the irony (several ironies) is lost on them.
But it is a bit worrying that they might succeed in re-packaging this for the voters as a “Dean scream”-type red-herring. It has happened several times before. It can happen again.
-cvj
Having watched the entire interview online, I can only say that President Clinton did exactly what every Democrat should be doing from now until November and beyond — pointing out the Republican spin-machine’s manipulations, calling them on it, then fighting back with the facts. I think he handed Wallace his head, and Fox just can’t deal with being shown up on their own airwaves. Er, sorry — our airwaves that they’re using up.
As for the “angry” thing: a) Hell yeah, Mr. Clinton was rightfully angry, since they tried to ambush him, and b) Since when has Bush given a speech in which he didn’t come off as nothing but angry and petty? And when has Fox ever commented that in a negative way?
Contrast this: “I actually talked to the 9/11 Commission for four hours and I told them the mistakes I thought I made. And I urged them to make those mistakes public because I thought none of us had been perfect” with the total inability of the current Administration to admit any mistakes, ever, no way, no how.
Fox is definitely trying to turn this into a “Dean YEAAAAAARGH!!!” moment, but I hope that this time, their BS spin will just get more people to watch the whole interview online and realize, “Wow. Wallace is an unqualified a-hole and Clinton was right on the nose.”
It is the story that keeps on giving. Now of course, as Jon Stewart so aptly put it last night, the story has become (especially for Fox) all about how WJC said what he said, and not at all about what he actually said. As i recall, Stewart contrasted Clinton wrathful versus Clinton informative, and showed numerous clips that avoided the substance of his comments. MediaMatters and ThinkProgress have both dug into the Lexis/Nexis databasis and found that Chris Wallace only asked one administration official (Rumsfeld) on only one occasion about pursuing bin Laden. But hey, they don’t care, they just keep spinning and lying and so forth on and on and on.
S’more:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/25/olbermanns-special-comment-are-yours-the-actions-of-a-true-american/
Don’t be surprised if you find yourself on a no-fly list for having written what you did 🙂