It was a sight to see: hundreds of alternative-newspaper
people standing and cheering Bill Clinton as he walked onstage, hanging on his
every word through a nearly hour-long talk and 45 minutes of questions, and
then rushing to the stage to shake his hand, get his autograph, and take his
picture.
When Clinton was
president, alt-weeklies published plenty of attacks on him. And a good many of
us are way farther to the left than he is. But when Clinton
addressed the annual convention of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
earlier this month in Little Rock,
you’d have thought he was talking to a room full of supporters at the height of
an election campaign.
The AAN response, I think, reflects the deep anguish many of
us feel about the Bush administration and the state of the nation. Despite the
tragedy in Iraq,
the attacks on civil liberties, and the president’s low approval ratings, the
Republican leadership in Washington
is solidly behind George Bush, and the Democrats remain weak.
An intelligent, eloquent, focused Bill Clinton was a relief,
and then some.
Speaking almost completely without notes, he flailed away at
lobbyists, Karl Rove, Ralph Nader, the secrecy and
lack of accountability of the Bush administration, the polarization in Washington,
and the Republican Party’s vilifying of Max Cleland. (The formerGeorgia senator
lost both legs and an arm in the Vietnam War, Clinton
noted: “How much more can you give to the country and still be able to
function?”)
He attacked Bush administration policies that, he said, have
harmed not only our own security but that of people in other parts of the
world. He talked about the complex nature of the nation’s problems, the threat
of global warming, our over-reliance on oil. He
bemoaned the high cost of health care, the rise in corporate leaders’ salaries
and the flat wages of the average American, the enormous gap between the
world’s rich and its poor, and the desperate plight of millions.
He criticized House Republicans’ approach to immigration.
“Our long porous borders have on balance been a great blessing to us,” he said.
And while the nation must be secure, he said, total security is impossible.
We’d be better off developing policies that win the friendship of other nations
and people — that build partnerships: helping address the health problems of
other parts of the world, for example. “These things are cheaper than war,” he
said. “And they work.”
Residents of Indonesia
and Pakistan
like Americans because we helped them following the tsunami and the earthquake,
he said: “Thirty percent of our households gave” to tsunami-relief efforts.
“The opinion of America
in Indonesia
went up, and the opinion of Bin Laden went down.”
He urged “home-improvement” measures in the US:
increased wages, affordable health care, more
investment in education, a rational energy policy. He pled for a “unifying
politics.” It’s not that politicians shouldn’t have their differences, he said,
but “we shouldn’t be so mad that we can’t hear one another talk.”
And, said Clinton,
“we’ve got to find ways to get back to evidence-based
politics.” (“Hillary was accused of being too wonkish”
on global warming, he said, “which tickled me, because what we need are
wonks.”)
Clinton is proud of his own record — and he
is proud of his wife’s record, during his administration and in the Senate. And
despite ground rules his handlers had set before his talk, he took questions
about Hillary.
On her plans to run for president: She hasn’t made a
decision.
On her chances of being elected president if she’s
nominated: She’ll have a high negative rating by election day,
but “it’s naive to think that anybody we nominate won’t have a high negative by
election day.” Republicans will demonize the Democratic candidate, no matter
who it is.
On his role if Hillary is elected president: “I’ll do
whatever she asks me to do. And I won’t do anything she asks me not to do.”
Asked his opinion about Robert Kennedy Jr.’s
recent article in Rolling Stone, charging that John Kerry, not George Bush, won
the majority of votes in Ohio and
thus won the 2004 presidential election, Clinton
said Kennedy made “a compelling case.”
And, he said, “I think there’s no question that Al Gore
would have won Florida” if all
the votes had been counted accurately and all the people who wanted to vote had
been able to.
He suggested issues that AAN journalists should raise during
their fall Congressional election coverage. Among them: “Do you believe in
unilateral preemptive military action? And what should we do in Iraq
now?”
Asked for his insight into George Bush, who occasionally
consults him, Clinton was cautious,
insisting it would be “a violation of confidence” to comment much. But, he
said, “I think he believes most of what he says.” Bush is more temperate on the
issue of immigration than many Republicans in Congress, for example, “because
he’s from Texas,” said Clinton.
And: “I think the reason he has given more money for AIDS is because he
believes it is the right thing to do. He is very strong and determined in what
he thinks is right.”
Clearly, Clinton
opposes many of the Bush administration’s policies. But he kept returning to
major themes of his talk: the need for a “unifying politics,”
and the need for the media and the public to avoid simplistic, “cartoon” views
of Bush: to “oppose what he is doing rather than ridicule him.”
(“I loved it when the Right Wing ridiculed me,” he said.
“When you ridicule someone, you underestimate them.”)
What alt journalists got in their nearly three hours with Clinton
was dramatically different from what had been planned. Reporting to her Denver
readers last week, Westword editor Patty Calhoun —
who had moderated the question-and-answer period following Clinton’s
speech — disclosed the ground rules (Clinton’s?
His aides’?)laid out prior
to the event. He would speak for 30 minutes and then take only two,
pre-screened questions, which Calhoun would ask. When a Clinton aide
signaled by tapping his chest, Calhoun was to wrap things up.
But two questions in, Clinton
was just getting warmed up, and more than half an hour later, ignoring his
aide, he was still taking questions. When Calhoun told him that the aide was
about to lose it, Clinton retorted:
“He’ll get over it.”
It was, of course, pure Bill Clinton: charming, captivating,
and completely in control. A masterful public speaker.A masterful politician.
And stunningly intelligent.
For anybody worried to the breaking point about the Bush
administration, it was impossible not to feel a profound sense of loss as Clinton
discussed the country’s needs,Darfur, global warming, and the ideals of
politics. And it was impossible not to look ahead and wonder who among the
Democrats (and among the Republicans, if moderates could take back control of
their party) could be his equal.
Bill Clinton’s record is by no means perfect. This newspaper
objected to plenty of his policies. And his astonishing sexual misconduct not
only humiliated his family but severely damaged his party, making it easy for
politicians with their own character flaws to masquerade as protectors of
American values.
Clinton is
right, of course, to chastise the media for “cartooning” politicians, and to
remind us of the complex nature of national and international challenges. But
during that sordid Clinton-Lewinsky period, much of the American public seemed
to react more intelligently and rationally than many politicians and much of
the media.
Back then, the public seemed to have no trouble sorting
things out, recognizing Clinton’s
behavior as a dreadful but private matter, not worth the national attention it
got, and far less significant than the challenges the country faced. The
posturing and sound bites of Clinton’s
critics didn’t seem to sway most Americans.
In the years since, though, the public seems to have become
less discriminating, less willing to look beyond simplistic rhetoric, more
accepting of fear-mongering. Maybe September 11 changed things. Certainly the
attack on Pearl Harbor inspired actions by the Rooseveltadministration that horrify us now.
But surely, as we approach the fifth anniversary of that
terrible, bright day in New York,
we can begin to put our fear in perspective. We are still two years away from
the next presidential election, but within the year, the people who want to
succeed George Bush will begin their campaigns in earnest. And it will be time
for the public to start assessing what those candidates say. Surely we can act
more intelligently than in November 2004.
Maybe Bill Clinton needs to drop in on a lot of conventions,
and a lot of cities.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2006.
