Soccer Dad

Unhinged or calculated

I was surprised when I saw last week that President Clinton was set to appear on Fox News Sunday for an exclusive one on one interview. With Fox's reputation as a right wing mouthpiece in some circles, it made no sense that Clinton would agree to appear on that network.

It made no sense until I saw the transcript of the interview.

CLINTON: OK, let's talk about it. Now, I will answer all those things on the merits, but first I want to talk about the context in which this arises.

I'm being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right- wing conservative run in their little "Pathway to 9/11," falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report.

And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn't do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush's neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much -- same people.

They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in "Black Hawk down," and I refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.

OK, now let's look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al Qaida was a growing concern in October of '93.

This was not a response to Chris Wallace's question. It was a premeditated attack on Wallace's integrity - accusing him of partisanship - and the integrity of his network. (Not to mention an attack on ABC too.) It was a Clinton attempt at innoculating himself against charges that he didn't take the terrorist threat seriously enough as president and, as standard bearer of the Democratic Party, to pin the lack of success in fighting terror on President Bush. (As if on cue reports on the National Intelligence Estimate that allegedly claims that the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat appeared Sunday.)

Nor am I alone in viewing Clintion's attack on Wallace as premeditated.

JoshuaPundit gives the short version

. . . nothing this our ex-president does is by accident. This screed by Clinton was designed to counteract the very real perception by many Americans that the Democratic party is `weak on Islamic terrorism' and energize the base in the run up to the November midterms.

William Kristol sums it up nicely with a few more details.

In this interview, Clinton rallied Democrats. He reminded them of their talking points on Bush's alleged passivity in his first eight months in office (remember Richard Clarke!), and on the alleged distraction posed by Iraq from the more worthwhile war in Afghanistan. He nicely laid the predicate for the leaked portions of the National Intelligence Estimate that appeared in the press the next day. If the Bush-Rove war-on-terror offensive stalls out this week (and much of the media is committed to making this happen), and Democrats do well in November, Bill Clinton can take credit, at a crucial moment, for discrediting the terror issue as a mere political ploy, and showing Democrats how "to fight back" and how "to stand up to the right-wing propaganda machine" (in the words of Howard Dean).

Though Right Wing Nuthouse discusses the goal of Clinton's diatribe, he sees it as a sign of the ex-President's character

Indeed, whether the show has a political impact is beside the point; it certainly angered the ex-President who seemed eager to tee off on the bemused Wallace. The Fox reporter sat in his seat dumbfounded as the former most powerful man in the world wagged a beefy finger in his face and accused him of a “conservative hit job,” a remarkable accusation given that Wallace had only asked one question about Bin Laden. Coupled with the off the wall suggestion that Fox was only doing the interview with him to assuage the supposed anger of their viewership who might be upset by Rupert Murdochs support of his climate initiative, and you have a portrait of someone so self-obsessed that one can only shake their head in disbelief that someone that enthralled with himself could ever have achieved high office.

John Dickerson had similar thoughts

Bill Clinton wasn't sandbagged, because he is a smart politician. He just spent several weeks fighting ABC over its interpretation of his administration's hunt for Bin Laden. He knew the question was coming and he took advantage of it. Forty-three days before the election, he has provided a moment to rally party activists and attack the GOP at the heart of its perceived strength on handling terrorism.

He also offers a comprehensive list of objectives that Clinton likely achieved.

InstaPundit has a nice roundup of reactions including why ex-President might not want to bring up Richard Clarke. He even sees the Clinton's reaction as backfiring. I don't know. I don't see it changing anyone's mind. Those of us who think that Clinton blew it won't be convinced otherwise; and those who think that the war in Iraq was a mistake and that Bush has mismanaged every aspect of the war on terror will look approvingly on Clinton's outburst. It was for the latter group that Clinton was performing. (BTW, if there had been a President Dole from 1997-2001, I don't things would have been much different. No one in the foreign policy establishment understood the growing terror threat prior to 9/11.)

UPDATE: Austin Bay disagrees. Other opinions here and here. Q and O almost buys the calculating Clinton, but then points to Dick Morris saying that what Chris Wallace and viewers saw, was the real Clinton.

Technorati tags: Bill Clinton, Iraq, War on Terror, Chris Wallace.

Posted by SoccerDad at September 26, 2006 5:51 AM