Bill Clinton’s ‘American President’ Moment

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/39060924_clinton_creams_fox_news/

Posted on Sep 24, 2006

Remember the scene toward the end of “The American President” in which Michael Douglas, playing President Andrew Shepherd, delivers a stand-up-and-cheer tongue-lashing against his critics? Watch as Bill Clinton demolishes Fox News’ Chris Wallace in a similar manner.

UPDATE: Chris Wallace reflects on the interview in an unbelievably disingenuous manner.

Note: Truthdig originally referred to the interviewer as Chris Matthews; the interviewer was in fact Chris Wallace.

For example:

Wallace: “I just simply asked him, ‘Why didn’t you do more [against bin Laden]. It wasn’t baiting, it wasn’t, I think, even antagonistic. And he just seemed set off. I don’t know if it was the [ABC] docudrama ... take the look in his eye.”

This is a load of BS.

Wallace asked Clinton a critical question that cuts right to the heart of his presidency; there was no way Clinton was going to roll over and play dead in response. So when Wallace claimed that he wasn’t “baiting” or being antagonistic, he was just lying (or being disingenuous, to be charitable).

UPDATE #2: Arianna Huffington applauds Clinton’s words, but calls him naive (watch it) for having indulged in a “bipartisan love-in” (read it)

The background of the Fox News interview:

Fox News tried to swiftboat Clinton on his Bin Laden record a la “The Path to 9/11” on Sunday, and the former president responded with a brutal fact-soaked defense. After defending his record, Clinton turned the tables and went after the network’s conservative agenda.

Watch it:

Transcript

Partial Transcript (from Think Progress):

CHRIS WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.

WALLACE: Right.

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried.

So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.

So you did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me. What I want to know is

WALLACE: Well, wait a minute, sir.

CLINTON: No, wait. No, no…

WALLACE: I want to ask a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of.

I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole?

I want to know how many you asked, Why did you fire Dick Clarke?

I want to know how many people you asked

(later in the interview)

CLINTON: What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him.

Now, Ive never criticized President Bush, and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq.

And you ask me about terror and Al Qaida with that sort of dismissive thing? When all you have to do is read Richard Clarkes book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror.

And you’ve got that little smirk on your face and you think youre so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could.

The entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaida was responsible while I was president.

And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time. They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that’s strange.