OK, ex-jester., L squared just won your job, but I'm rooting for you, 'cuz you are most funny. While I've got him distracted over in the corner, practicing his spinning, I'm gonna set you up for a really good punch line. Gopher it, lad; get yer jester hat back...
Clinton's credibility bounces back
As Bush looks bad in Sept. 11 hearings, his predecessor's stock is soaring
By DOUG SAUNDERS
Thursday, April 8, 2004
Bill Clinton will not be sitting in the congressional hearing room today as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice faces a barrage of questions about the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. But his presence will very much be felt.
After years of disgrace and self-imposed silence, this is the former president's moment of resurrection. Just as Mr. Bush's Republican administration faces its most awkward and unpopular moment, Mr. Clinton's public image is suddenly soaring, both in Washington and abroad.
On terrorism, Mr. Bush is looking bad, and Mr. Clinton is looking good. On the African AIDS crisis, Mr. Bush's policies appear to have failed, while Mr. Clinton's charitable efforts have helped. On the campaign trail, Mr. Clinton is threatening to overshadow Senator John Kerry, the official Democratic candidate.
"I would say that Clinton is no longer the lightning rod he once was; memories have faded and feelings about him aren't as strong, so he's begun to appear all over the place," said Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Today's long-awaited testimony will mark the culmination of a month when Mr. Clinton's terrorism policies have been contrasted favourably with those of Mr. Bush. The toughest questions to be fired at Ms. Rice, who is Mr. Bush's top aide responsible for security, will involve her failure to adopt the comparatively tough stance toward Islamic terrorism that Mr. Clinton's administration took. Earlier testimony, and the recent book Against All Enemies by former White House terrorism chief Richard Clarke, have suggested Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush dismissed terrorism as a secondary issue redolent of the Clinton years.
But Mr. Clinton established a commission on national security and ordered it to report to Mr. Bush's incoming administration that Americans would "become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland [and] likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers." The report also suggested a homeland security agency, a recommendation that the new cabinet ignored until after Sept. 11.
Ms. Rice is likely to rebut those contentions forcefully today, arguing that she was busily preparing an even more aggressive plan to fight al-Qaeda in the days before Sept. 11. But she will have to spend a good part of her time comparing her failures against terrorism to the policies of Mr. Clinton, who took military action against Osama bin Laden and made frequent speeches about the terrorist threat.
Indeed, Mr. Clinton is emerging from the shadows to take a number of initiatives that make him look surprisingly successful compared to Mr. Bush's failures.
This week, Mr. Clinton's charitable organization negotiated a deal for AIDS drugs to be provided to poor African and Caribbean countries at half their usual cost, a significant victory that was achieved while Mr. Bush's $15-billion (U.S.) African AIDS-fighting initiative is stalled in Congress with little of its promised money spent.
"The historic Clinton Foundation drug-pricing and distribution deal is a powerful slap to President Bush's arrogant attempts to limit the use of generic AIDS medicines to suit the whims of his pharmaceutical backers," Paul Davis of the advocacy group Health GAP declared yesterday.
Mr. Clinton's newfound credibility is becoming a factor on the campaign trail, where he has become a chief campaigner for Mr. Kerry.
Yesterday, during a major speech at Washington's Georgetown University, Mr. Kerry mentioned Mr. Clinton favourably four times, an act that would have been unthinkable four years ago, when Al Gore went out of his way to avoid mentioning his former running mate. Suddenly, the Clinton era has become the shining city on the hill for Democrats.
Now that the name Clinton is associated with better policies and economics instead of being synonymous with sex scandal, Mr. Kerry plans to use the former president aggressively against Mr. Bush. In fact, campaign workers say their main worry is that Mr. Clinton's celebrity will overshadow Mr. Kerry's own presence.
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