Despite all the good feminist and progressive reasons to hate him, I just can't quit Bill Clinton (or four-year-old jokes, apparently). And one of the things I love most about him is how well he does righteous indignation (at least when he's actually righteous). For example:
We've got 9 percent of all eligible homeowners in America having their mortgages rewritten - 9 percent - and you're talking to me about where Obama was born? Give me a break. I mean it's like, what is this?
Dude. Preach. Also:
[The Republicans'] basic strategy as near as I can tell is to sit around and wait and hope the president screws up. But what I'm more worried about is our people getting careless, forgetting the experience of '94, and that it is imperative that they produce a health-care bill for the president and make it the best one they can; if it's not perfect, we'll go back and fix it. But the people hire you to deliver. This electorate has suffered. They've suffered economically, they've suffered an enormous amount of sort of psychic insecurity from 9/11 to the economic breakdown, they've seen all this change going on around them, and they see in Obama a cool and intelligent guy who can multitask in a world where they know you've got to multitask. What they don't know is whether our guys are going to stand and deliver. And sooner or later you've got to stand and deliver.
Yes! Hear that, Obama? Hear that, Congress?
The interview also includes Clinton's vision of what might have happened if Al Gore had become President in 2000 — just little changes like improved relations with North Korea and "total denuclearization of the peninsula," or an SEC that saw the writing on the wall and did something to head off economic catastrophe. And oh yes, he's not saying Gore could have prevented 9/11, but let's just say he 'was hypervigilant in his following of the intelligence reports and very solid in his understanding of the defense and security policy,' and if it had happened anyway, President Gore wouldn't have led us into a clusterfuck of a war on two fronts. Not coincidentally, Clinton also goes off on the 2000 Supreme Court for coronating Bush:
'[T]hey issued what I think is one of the five most reprehensible decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. And they were embarrassed about it, because if you read the decision, it says, 'Now, unlike our other decisions, this has no precedential value; you can never cite this decision in any other case for the rest of eternity, this is only a one-off.' I mean, they know better. They knew better than to do what they were doing - it was just a pure, naked political deal, but anyway, it happened.
OK wait, now I'm feeling less like cheering on his righteous indignation and more like crying, throwing things, and wishing for a time machine.
Nevertheless, I'd recommend reading the whole thing. And it would be just lovely if a few members of the Democratic party would read it, too, taking special note of this part:
That's all the Democrats need to do today. They just need to remember that there's a reason we win: We win when people feel that their country doesn't care about them anymore, and they've got to have a little help, and that we can make a new beginning.'
Exactly. When you win because people want a new beginning, bending over backwards to appease those who want the same old shit is not a winning strategy, in terms of reelection or the moral high ground. On healthcare reform (which, for the record, he takes responsibility for screwing up in '94, though he also delightfully blames Bob Dole personally), Clinton says, 'the president's doing the right thing. It is both morally and politically right.' Let's hope the people we elected recognize at least one of those things and finally, as he repeatedly exhorts them to do here, stand and deliver.
Bill Clinton, Then and Now: The Esquire Interview [Esquire]
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