‘Why Bill Clinton Pushed Back’

September 29, 2006

I have to admit, as impressed as I was with Bill Clinton’s appearance on Fox News last weekend, I didn’t really expect the story to still be buzz-worthy six days later. And yet, here we are. Before Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned, the former president’s smackdown remained a major topic of conversation.

Why, exactly, did this strike such a chord? It seemed relatively straight forward — Chris Wallace presented Clinton with some conservative myths and Clinton set the record straight. Sure, it was an animated discussion, but this wasn’t an interview that necessarily broke new ground.

At least, that is, when it came to actual information. As E. J. Dionne noted today, it did break new rhetorical ground, which Dionne suggests could have “political implications that go beyond this fall’s elections.”

By choosing to intervene in the terror debate in a way that no one could miss, Clinton forced an argument about the past that had up to now been largely a one-sided propaganda war waged by the right. The conservative movement understands the political value of controlling the interpretation of history. Now its control is finally being contested. […]

A genuinely sober and moderate view would recognize that it’s time the scales of history were righted. Propagandistic accounts need to be challenged, systematically and consistently. The debate needed a very hard shove. Clinton delivered it.

Quite right. The debate, for quite a while, has been rather one sided — Bush’s allies have said simultaneously that we can’t play the “blame game,” and in the next breath, have said everything is Clinton’s fault.

It’s not only contradictory, it’s plainly, demonstrably wrong. It’s no wonder the Bush gang is sensitive about it.

Indeed, Time reported this week that Clinton’s push-back was not an altogether welcome event at the White House.

[W]hat really teed off the Bushies is that Clinton then said that his successor “did not try” to kill or stop bin Laden for the first eight months in office — that is, the eight months before the 9/11 attacks. The Bush White House has always been hugely sensitive about this charge because, well, there is some truth to it. The new administration came into office and put terror about third or fourth down on its list of big worries, behind Russia, the ABM treaty, and sorting out that unexpected spy plane problem with the Chinese. (Many Republicans just refuse to believe this.)

And the person (besides Bush himself) most responsible for ordering things that way was Condoleezza Rice, then the National Security Adviser, a longtime Russia expert. It was always my impression that Rice made it through all the after-action reviews of 9/11 surprisingly unscathed — and I think that clean accounting helps explain why Rice, who is now Secretary of State, jumped into this slapfest on Monday. That’s when she charged that Clinton failed to leave behind a “comprehensive” strategy for dealing with bin Laden. If by that she means a plan to invade Afghanistan, she’s partly right — Clinton’s terror advisers presented a plan that stopped short of invasion. But even if invasion had been included, such a plan would have gone nowhere. Everyone knows the first thing the Bush team did was reflexively throw out anything that had Clinton’s scent, much less his name, on it.

Add to this today’s revelation that the Bush White House was presented with a plan to kill Osama bin Laden months before 9/11, but Condi Rice and the Bush gang blew off intelligence officials, and we see that this isn’t an argument the president and his supporters really want to have.

Indeed, it’s been an odd week in this regard. The Bush gang fueled the fight over pre-9/11 counter-terrorism, even though they knew they’d end up looking bad. The same Bush gang responded to the NIE leak with a bogus defense, even though they knew the NIE would make them appear foolish.

I wonder what the weather is like in the Bush gang’s reality?

“I wonder what the weather is like in the Bush gang’s reality?”

The “snow” falls day and night.

I think there will only be more of this in the coming years (provided Shrubya doesn’t squelch debate by throwing everyone in jail). Attacking every one who tells the truth is a tactical error on the Admin’s part because the more times they lie the worse it looks when more facts come out to refute their claims. As time passes, Shrubco will be pushed into a smaller and smaller corner where they have fewer choices and a limited number of things they can say to distract the public or deter debate. I predict we’ll see more bizarre and illogical statements; Shriller accusations of “aiding the enemy,” and hopefully the climax will be Shrubya throwing a full on tanturm in the Rose Garden.

I think they’d be a lot better off keeping their mouths shut but because we’re dealing with insecure wing nuts they won’t be happy until everyone agrees that their version of events is the way it happened. And I’m OK with that. It means more evidence for the judges at the Hauge to review.

  • I think terror was about fourth or fifth on the list. They (Time) forgot to include brush cutting at the Crawford ranch.

  • I think the “push back” would be noteworthy anyway since it’s the immediately former President who’se doing the pushing. Clinton has a been remarkably quiescent about Bush’s multitudinous failures. This breaks that dam at last.

    But what makes it extraordinarily noteworthy, in my book, is that it is the only instance I can think of in which any Democrat has felt free to strike back with full force against an inquisitor from the “fourth estate”.

    As we’ve all seen (here, and earlier with Jon Stewart on Crossfire), it works. Putting the GOP and their minions on the defensive (at last) works. God, I wish the other Dems could grow some balls (or whatever the both-gender equivalent to that comment might be).

  • The one constant about Bush is that he seems unable to change or adjust to new information or facts on the ground. He came into office with the preconceived idea that we had to continue fighting the Cold War, and that Missile Defense was his #1 Foriegn Policy priority. During the hand off, Clinton told him that he would be spending most of his time on bin Laden and terrorist threats, I don’t think Bush could hear it. This information just didn’t fit into his view of the world. Terrorism had no meaning for him and bin Laden was a nobody.

    When faced with real facts, all the facts on the ground in Iraq, there is no correction, just keep doing what you’re doing, no matter what.

    However he got it into his head that torture is somehow a useful tool, he is unable to accept that it 1) it delivers unreliable information and 2) corrupts and degrades true intelligence gathering by substituting real intel agents with sadistic actors.

    There are probably hundreds of examples we can cite; what Bush believes, versus reality and how he can’t adjust. Tax cuts, social security, medicare part D, global climate change, education…

    And we end up with a nation and a world suffering the punishment for the most powerful person’s inability to understand the world, the greyness inherant in foriegn relations, the intent of the founders and the miracle that used to be the Constitution of the United States of America.

  • How true, bcinaz, how true. And the tragedy is that Bush should never have been in there in the first place. He lost the 2000 election.

  • For a change, Repubs are on the defensive about protecting America and have to respond to authentic claims of their impotence in the face of threats to our national security. Clinton, Woodward, the retired generals, the NIE … the list goes on and on of factual accounts of how Bush has and continues to blow it. It couldn’t have happened at a better time (before the elections) and I can’t help but feel their is a general erosion public confidence in the continuing parade of fibs and hubris from the White House. The myth of Republican strength on the issue of terror continues to be debunked.

  • God, I so thoroughly enjoyed watching Clinton’s smackdown. But I’ve been absolutely disgusted that even liberals have been describing it as if Clinton flipped out, when he of course did no such thing. It just goes to show how the media’s been spinning it, to make Clinton look crazy. And now Roger Ailes comes out saying that Clinton was attacking all journalists. What a crock!

    Oh, for the return of the fairness doctrine…

  • Now that habeas corpus has been suspended, we can all be held for indefinite amounts of time with no charges filed. I worry about those few in the press who show gumption. I would not be surprised if there is a terrorist attack before the /08 election and martial law is declared. These guys are nutcases of the highest/lowest order.

    And this from someone who prior to 2002 was not a conspiracy believer. Bush has taken me over the edge.

  • Quite right. The debate, for quite a while, has been rather one sided — Bush’s allies have said simultaneously that we can’t play the “blame game,” and in the next breath, have said everything is Clinton’s fault.

    Really? What about Sandy Berger telling TIME, back in 2002, that Clarke left a “plan” with Rice (Berger later backpedaled).

    (Here is a Howler link; scroll down to “A STORY ANDREW SULLIVAN LIKES”.

    What about Richard Clarke at the 9/11 hearing in 2004? That was kicked around for longer than this Clinton thing.

    Do those episodes not count?

    FWIW, this, from TIME, is probably dead wrong:

    If by that she means a plan to invade Afghanistan, she’s partly right — Clinton’s terror advisers presented a plan that stopped short of invasion. But even if invasion had been included, such a plan would have gone nowhere. Everyone knows the first thing the Bush team did was reflexively throw out anything that had Clinton’s scent, much less his name, on it.

    My strong impression is that Clarke presented a *proposal* which had not been reviewed, approved, budgeted, staffed, ro anything else by any of the relevant departments, which included State, Defense, and Treasury.

    However, there was a key meeting on Sept 4 2001 adopting most of Clarke’s ideas, and a memo requesting the President’s approval went out on Sept 10.

    Too slow? Most of the ideas had been kicked around since the embassy bombings in 1998 and regained urgency after the Cole bombing in Dec 2000.

  • I keep hoping that one of these days, Bush cracks under the criticism and loses it with reporters — I mean, really loses it — and does or says something so obviously insane that it shakes American voters awake to the dangerous man at the helm.

  • I would say it’s pretty kind to claim that the Bush administration put terrorism 3rd or 4th on the list. Cheney was put in charge of counter-terrorism, yet he held no meetings on it prior to 9/11. A search of the DOJ website reveals no memos, letters or press releases on terrorism prior to 9/11. Rice mentioned almost nothing publicly about terrorism during the same time. I’d say it ranked well below making up stories about Clinton staffers trashing their WH offices.

  • What amuses me is the Rove and the Rebulican’ts imagine that by focusing on the “Global War on Terror” (stupid name) they can win the Midterm Elections. With Clinton’s (praise ever be his name) pushback we have the formula for the Democrats to take this issue away from the Republican’ts.

  • @12 You and me both.

    Keep an eye peeled as 2008 winds to the end (finally!). I can’t see the Worm in the White House happily relinquishing absolute power after eight years, regardless of who wins. When I don my tin-foil hat I suspect that if Republicans maintain a majority there will be a push to erradicate term limits. The idea was kicked around in R.R.’s time. I could easily see Shrubco digging out the “Don’t change horses” argument again: Only Shrub can protect us from ter-ists so he should remain in office until all the ter-ists are gone.

  • Until ALL Democrats have the gumption to speak out and challenge the Republican propaganda and call it what it actually is, what choices do we REALLY have at election time?

    Several months ago I sent an (I’m sure ignored) email to Harry Reid after Russ Feingold introduced the censure resolution, saying that THIS is the kind of thing Democrats must do, and it would be futile to tell the voting population to get more Democrats in Congress if those Dems already there didn’t speak out vociferously and constantly against the Bush administration’s vandalism of America.

    I told him that Democrats MUST stop trying to “triangulate” themselves against the right wing to win elections and to do the right thing and anything legal to object to what the Bush cabal is doing. To become VISIBLE and AUDIBLE. Otherwise, why should anybody vote for Democrats when there’s no perceivable difference?

    Well, of course they didn’t.

    Democrats to a large extent are like the cowed wife of a child beater — a cowed wife doesn’t even try to defend her children from abuse. If she does, she may get beat up herself, but the children at least know that she doesn’t approve of it and is willing to fight for them. It’s simply the RIGHT thing to do, and nobody is free of life’s hardships and moral challenges.

    Why weren’t they LOUDLY educating America about Bush’s torture bill? I know they didn’t have a lot of time or access to the bill before it was distributed, but they KNEW what was coming — it was certainly telegraphed many times.

    Someone once wrote, “If you know the right thing to do and everybody else runs away when the going gets tough, DO IT ANYWAY.

  • Aside from one malaprop, Clinton was excellent for 22 minutes. Imagine Bush staying coherent for 5% of this time. Why won’t somebody in the media put him under the heatlamps?

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