The Big Dog isn’t holding back

September 19, 2005

Maybe it was George Stephanopoulos’ ability to pry information out of his old boss, maybe it was some kind of political calculation, or perhaps the former president is just sick of holding his tongue, but Bill Clinton was on ABC yesterday morning and he spoke his mind on all kinds of hot-button issues.

For example, he’s not happy about Bush’s deficits.

“I think it’s very important that Americans understand, you know, tax cuts are always popular, but about half of these tax cuts since 2001 have gone to people in my income group, the top 1 percent. I’ve gotten four tax cuts.

“They’re responsible for this big structural deficit, and they’re not going away, the deficits aren’t. Now, what Americans need to understand is that that means every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts. We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else.”

Or the racial and class divide.

“[W]e had the lowest African-American unemployment, the lowest African-American poverty rate ever recorded. We had the highest homeownership, highest business ownership, and we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty in eight years as had been moved out in the previous 12 years.

“This is a matter of public policy, and whether it’s race-based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, and poverty goes up, and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that’s a consequence of the action made. That’s what they did in the eighties; that’s what they’ve done in this decade.

“In the middle, we had a different policy. We concentrated tax cuts on lower income working people and benefits to low-income people that helped them move from welfare to work, and we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty. We know what works, and we had a program that was drastically reducing poverty, and they got rid of it. And they don’t believe in it.”

Or Iraq.

“I did not favor what was done. I did favor the Congress giving the president the power to use force, because when he asked for it in his speech in Cincinnati, he basically made the argument I’ve made many times, which is Saddam Hussein never did anything he wasn’t forced to do, so he needed to know that there would be consequences if he didn’t fully comply with the U.N. inspections.

“But the administration, then, decided to launch this invasion virtually alone and before the U.N. inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were any weapons of mass destruction there. So I thought that diverted our attention from Iraq and … al Qaeda and undermined the support that we might have had.”

Nice to see the Big Dog back in the game.

Oh ok. Nice.

Am I alone not to care much about what Clinton has to say?

  • Nice to see the Big Dog back in the game.

    Agreed. And just for the record, I’m glad he’s not focusing on the Fed response to Katrina. The tax cuts, the deficit, rich vs. poor policy, and Iraq are much better targets for substantive discussions.

  • You know what really sucks? …… listening to the grownup talk from Clinton, then thinking of what we have to listen coming out of Bush’s mouth. Wouldnt it be nice to have a President who can talk ??

  • Unlike Clinton, I believe that it was a real mistake for Congress to give Bush the power to decide on war with Iraq. Why? Because the bastard can’t be trusted to act responsibly. By the time that vote came around there was ample evidence that he’d already decided to take the country to war, and to pretend otherwise was naive and irresponsible of Congress. So what else is new?

  • “Am I alone not to care much about what Clinton has to say?”

    Not alone but in a minority, Fifi. The 24/7/365 line of Newspeak that we endure from the Republican party needs a counter balance. At worst I could argue that 49% of the voting public was/is in favor of Clinton’s methods (interns excluded) and enjoyed the results.

    Ex-presidents historically ride off into the sunset and are wheeled out when someone important dies or whatever. Bush 43 has invited Clinton into the public eye twice now (along with Bush 41). The Republicans have shattered every rule for behavior in American Politics and I think Clinton should do exactly what he is. He has to reming everyone that the Emperor not only has no clothes but he is an incompetent hack.

    Go get him Bill!

  • I think you are definitely in the minority. He rubbed some people the wrong way, but no one can argue that he was one of the best public speakers of my generation (I am 35). He really made people feel like they belonged to something, and he didn’t have to scare them to do it.

    So I hope to hear a lot more from him.

  • MNProgressive, ScottW,

    He rubbed some people the wrong way

    At least not me, I don’t have much against him. Well actually, I have one thing. About this BJ and intern thing. I’m still furious. Couldn’t he cheat on his wife with someone, you know, a bit classier. Dunno, a top-notch actress, a famous novelist, a cute rocket scientist? I thought he really debased the presidency whith his poor tastes on suitable infedelity

  • Arrrrgh! Darn ! CB! Can you add a preview button, please, pretty please ? Anyway, continuing …

    … his poor tastes on suitable infidelity. No sense of who would constitutes a suitable paramour for a presidentially appropriate practice of infidelity. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Unforgivable.

    Beyond that, I disagree with some of his policies but that doesn’t make him unrespectable. It’s just that he seems that he doesn’t have much to add to what I can hear elsewhere. A bit irrelevant.

    Now, MNProgressive has a really good point. Clinton is a living reminder of GWB’s lethal mediocrity and there are still a lot of people out there who need to be reminded of it.

  • A couple things I want to say:

    1) My first thought on reading this article was the same as Michael’s. When was the last time I heard a president talk about structural deficits? It’s very refreshing after 5 years of nothing but chest-beating about tax cuts every time economics comes up. “Can you explain the NIMBY principle to the press corps, Mr. McClellan?” “Certainly. The administration believes in tax relief for America.” We went from one of the smartest men in the history of the office to (arguably) one of the as-a-rock dumbest.

    2) I have to respectfully disagree with Fifi. I love to hear about Clinton, particularly in this day and age when he has something critical of the current leadership (which is atrocious) to say (which always impresses.) But more to the point, what I don’t understand is how some people such as yourself (unless I have you wrong, of course!) can be so critical of what a president did in his private life (that, additionally, reflects a growing trend in the country as a whole,) but not be critical of some even more egregious abuses of the office in the form of official policy that would be easily impeachable offences if he were a Democrat. I may not be describing you, after all, you read this site enough to respond in the comments section after all, but I worry about the part of the country that does describe, the ones who know how Jen felt about Brad and Angelina last week but have no idea that Saddam never had any WMDs.

  • Arrrrgh! Darn ! CB! Can you add a preview button, please, pretty please ? Anyway, continuing …

    I agree. This site would benefit from more functionality in the comments section, or even an evolution into a discussion forum independant of blog articles. There are a lot of topics I’d love to pursue with this crowd, some of which don’t necessarily fit into the daily political opposition news-oriented subjects, things like Morbo’s topics but which could also be discussed over more than just the course of a day.

  • I always enjoy hearing what Bill Clinton has to say. The guy is simply brilliant, but he doesn’t try to beat your over the head with it. Sure, he may have made some poor choices in his personal life (who hasn’t? I know quite a few very prominent Republicans who have done likewise), but there’s no quibbling with his intelligence and his ability not only to understand the issues, but also to be able to talk about them in layman’s terms.

    He makes George W. Bush look like a complete doofus. In fact, every time I think about Bush being the U.S. President, I cringe. I remember him from his days here in the Dallas area when he owned the Rangers. That should have been his pinnacle in the public eye. Anything beyond that was a serious stretch to his abilities and his intellect. Just goes to show what a well-funded and ruthless political machine can do for you. Scary!

    If Clinton could run for President again, I’d vote for him again. And I’m one who voted for Reagan and Bush Sr. before Clinton ran in 1992. He IS the real deal.

  • Rian,

    I was kidding about Clinton’s philandering. Considering the whole story, it annoyed me a bit he banged a random intern rather than, say, chase Catherine Zeta-Jones’ shirts. Too easy, self-indulgent. If the Senate had had any sense of humor, they would have censured him for bad taste. But fundamentally, I, as most of the public, didn’t and still don’t give a rat’s arse of what he did with his nether parts.

    I annoyed me to no ends though that he allowed himself to get caught and blew 2 years of his presidency. Freaking amateur. And the whimpering public apology really went under my skin. Take it like a man and tell them all to go get stuffed! If you get caught with your pants down, at least, show them all you have the biggest peter!

    But granted. His “sins” (of not knowing how to fool around safely) were nothing compared to those of the Republicans and the media who created this stupid story.

  • I found this particularly interesting because it’s seemed to me that Clinton has gone out of his way to be respectful and helpful to his successor… presumably respecting the great challenge of the office, even willing to publicly help out for Tsunami aid among others.

    The fact that he’s now putting that aside and essentially kick Dubya while he’s down means one of two things: 1) He decided he couldn’t take it anymore, or 2) the campaign for 2006 and 2008 has begun (possibly for Hillary, but maybe just the Dems in general).

    • Comments are closed.