July 24, 2003

CLINTON BOOSTS BUSH

From a Larry King interview with Clinton (emphasis added):

CLINTON: Well, here’s what happens: every day the president gets a daily brief from the CIA. And then, if it’s some important issue—and believe me, you know, anything having to do with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons became much more important to everybody in the White House after September the 11—then they probably told the president, certainly Condoleezza Rice, that this is what the British intelligence thought. They maybe have a difference of opinion, but on balance, they decided they should leave that line in the speech.

I think the main thing I want to say to you is, people can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks…

DOLE: That’s right.

CLINTON: ... of biological and chemical weapons. We might have destroyed them in ‘98. We tried to, but we sure as heck didn’t know it because we never got to go back in there.

KING: Yes.

CLINTON: And what I think—again, I would say the most important thing is we should focus on what’s the best way to build Iraq as a democracy? How is the president going to do that and deal with continuing problems in Afghanistan and North Korea?

We should be pulling for America on this. We should be pulling for the people of Iraq. We can have honest disagreements about where we go from here, and we have space now to discuss that in what I hope will be a nonpartisan and open way. But this State of the Union deal they decided to use the British intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence. Then they said on balance they shouldn’t have done it. You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president. I mean, you can’t make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in awhile. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now. That’s what I think.

This is an astonishing amount of support for Bush coming from a leading Democrat at this time.

Yesterday many conservative talk-radio hosts said that this was a sneaky way for Clinton to promote himself. I heard suggestions that:

• Clinton was trying to undercut all other Democratic contenders for the Presidency so that Hillary would be stronger when she chose to run, possibly as early as 2004.
• Clinton was trying to head off similar criticisms of his own actions while in office.

I’ve got a different take on it. I suggest that Clinton can see that the Democratic party self-destructing via a disregard for the well-being of the country, in pursuit of political goals. I think Clinton is just trying to make a powerful contribution to the future of his party by pointing it back in the right direction.