I watched the first half of the BBC interview with Bill Clinton, which you can see here. You may have heard that he grows angry with the interviewer, and so I'll save you some time if you want to see it: skip to 19:00, and you'll see the lead-up. The outburst starts building at 24:30, with a crescendo at 28:50.
I thought of so many things while watching it, but I am so tired of thinking about that man that I cannot summon the energy. A few thoughts, though:
A close family member used to work with Ken Starr. One of my best friends took a constitutional law class with him. When I had lunch with a senior editor at another news organization, he said he had interviewed Starr many times over the years. All of them, to a man, remarked how fair and honest he was, and that he was light years away from the snarling partisan that Clinton imagined, and continues to imagine in this interview.
Some of his facts are flat-out wrong. Susan McDougal was jailed for contempt of court by a judge, not Starr, who was not a prosecutor. She was one of the "little people" Clinton says were trampled by the all-out rush to ruin him. Governor Jim Guy Tucker, the sitting governor of Arkansas, also resigned and went to jail as a result of Starr's investigation. Apparently the criminal justice system had it in for Clinton, too.
The outburst itself was classic Clinton. The childish sense of persecution, the peevish remarks to the interviewer such as "people like you always help the far right" (was he even familiar with the guy interviewing him?) His descriptions of how "the other side" operated was the mirror opposite of the truth. He says the evil Republicans thought that politics was about power, and he thought it was about how power ought to be used. But if there is a modern politician who believed in acquiring power for his own sake, it would be him.
Clinton doesn't ever say "I lied," he says "I did not tell the truth." He talks about "personal mistakes," too. His language is carefully selected so he can admit to the bare minimum ("leading parallel lives," whatever the hell that means -- maybe he has a different view of the space-time continuum, and thinks there are actually two Bill Clintons.)
I'm not very interested in re-fighting the 1990s. I just wish he would go away.
...two Bill Clintons.
Don't give me nightmares! One's quite enough, thank you very much! :)
What's most striking about BC is what how transparently, deeply immature he is. Remember the outburst at the Thernstroms and some other conservative thinkers during a forum on racism during his second term? BC has exploded and thrown rather public tantrums any number of times when really challenged.
Sadly, he probably won't be going away anytime soon. His need for adulation, and his likely commitment to help his wife get to the White House, means we're in for a long haul with this sorry and embarrassing public figure.
Hear! Hear!
My only consolation from BC's continued presence on the scene - is that maybe he'll damage other Dems like Kerry.
Kevin, some are speculating that that's exactly his goal -- to damage Kerry.
he'll never go away. just wait until the mrs. becomes president. if canada is really becoming more conservative, maybe I'll move when that happens.
No man that I respect has any respect for Bill Clinton. But what about the other half of the country?
Personal character is an issue for conservatives because we understand that our liberties are grounded in self-restraint and accountability to a transcendent moral order. Our leaders must model this. And so we can never evaluate an administration solely on the wisdom or morality of its policies.
Both the fact that a man like Clinton became President and the fact that half of the electorate is indifferent to his venality and narcissicism is deeply troubling.
It troubled me, too, Charles. Whether or not one agrees with Clinton's politics, it seems to me that such a patently and rather transparently venal, narcissistic adolescent is not the kind of person one wants holding the nuclear football.
Two phenomena, I think, kept him in office once the Lewinsky matter blew up. First was the hard-core support of the media and "professional class" who would not under any circumstances tolerate us "red zonish" neandertals claiming the scalp of one of their own, the High Priest of the Sacrament, the Defender of the Abortion License upon which the Sexual Revolution Rests.
Second, a certain amount of the public is enjoys the saccharine comfort of a saccharine snake-oil salesman who tells them what they want to hear. In good economic times like Clinton's second term, people aren't willing to throw out a siren-singer--especially when they at least vaguely sense that Clinton is to some degree protector of their own sexual autonomy. And when more than a few of them have done things like what Clinton did (at least hopefully not what he did to Juanita Broaddrick).
Fortunately, as 9/11 demonstrated, the American public still has a deep enough sense of basic decency to pull together when confronted with real danger. If we continue on the path we're on, it may not always stay that way.
Am I doing something wrong? I started at 19:00 and went clear to 28:50 and didn't see any outburst. Has the interview been edited to clip it out?
The finger-jabbing and jerky gesticulating start around minute 28 in the video I saw, GoodForm.