When the controversy first erupted over the ABC "docudrama" The Path to 9/11, I wrote that I thought Clinton and his defenders had made a horrible miscalculation. I still do. I think, however, that Bill Clinton made an even worse one in his appearance on Fox News Sunday. I don't think I have been particularly hard on Clinton, certainly not as hard as a lot of his critics. I have pointed out that every administration starting with Jimmy Carter has made mistakes in dealing with terrorists and rogue states. Carter I think deserves a lot of blame for his role in the virulent spread of terror as a political tool, but that's another discussion.
But Clinton, by going off as he did on Wallace, hurt himself and his legacy rather badly, I think. It got much, much worse for him this morning, as a direct result of his appearance.
On Monday's "Early Show", co-host Harry Smith talked with Scheuer about the war in Iraq and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Smith was shocked when Scheuer laid the blame at the feet of the Clinton administration, and attempted to put the focus back on failures of the Bush Administration. Smith highlighted president Clinton's defense of his administration:
"Let's talk about what President Clinton had to say on Fox yesterday. He basically laid blame at the feet of the CIA and the FBI for not being able to certify or verify that Osama bin Laden was responsible for a number of different attacks. Does that ring true to you?"
Scheuer refuted Smith’s portrayal of Clinton:
"No, sir, I don't think so. The president seems to be able, the former president seems to be able to deny facts with impunity. Bin Laden is alive today because Mr. Clinton, Mr. Sandy Berger, and Mr. Richard Clarke refused to kill him. That's the bottom line. And every time he says what he said to Chris Wallace on Fox, he defames the CIA especially, and the men and women who risk their lives to give his administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden."
Smith couldn’t let these facts tarnish the Clinton legacy, so he attempted to change the subject back to the Bush Administration:
"All right, is the Bush administration any less responsible for not finishing the job in Tora Bora?"
Scheuer acknowledged that there is plenty of blame to go around for not getting bin Laden, but asserted that Clinton bears most of it:
"Oh, I think there's plenty of blame to go around, sir, but the fact of the matter is that the Bush Administration had one chance that they botched, and the Clinton Administration had eight to ten chances that they refused to try…"
This one hurt – a lot. This morning show probably has a substantially larger audience than Fox News Sunday (that's a guess with no research to back it up). More important though, is that the audience for this show are not political junkies. Clinton did this to himself with first his over-the-top attacks on ABC then this ill-advised, televised temper tantrum.
UPDATE: And a contrarian view from William Kristol. Did Clinton do it on purpose?
There was a time when the only news venues I ever paid attention to was NBC and the NY Times.
I look back at those myopic days and all I can say is thank heaven for the blogsphere.
It’s sometimes really noisy in here, though!
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I think it’s great that Condi says Bush’s first 9 months in office were as aggressively anti-terrorist and Clinton’s administration during the preceding years. Of course, this is after the Bush administration spent 5 years pinning Osama’s existence on Clinton.
So…either Clinton was telling the truth on Fox News and Bush is just as good as he is, or Clinton was a useless lump and Bush was just as useless.
We report, you decide.
syn: it’s good that you regret being hyperfocused on one source of news. Clearly now, you see all sources as equally informative and use them all to inform yourself.