A thrilling, cathartic read for warts-and-all Bill Clinton DUers ONLY....

[DeepModem Mom]

No Clinton wars, please.
:)

WP: Bill Clinton, Beyond the White House
By Tina Brown
Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page C01

The big surprise of Bill Clinton's Global Initiative conference at the Sheraton Hotel in New York last week was how strangely calming it was....To be sure, Clinton, the big intellectual showoff, had never been less than brilliant on his feet, but he never knew when to stop. And all that promiscuous lateral thinking ended up sucking the air out of the room. We got so tired of his lack of discipline that by 2000 we thought we were ready for a presidency that operated by assertion. Five years later we see what that's brought.

Maybe it's the effect of his brush with death. He's pared himself down to the essentials, symbolized by the slimmed physique and the paternal reading glasses. His style was always inclusive even when he was on the attack. But now you feel he's shed the psychic baggage of the impeachment years and with it the toxic rock and roll of his constantly roiling reputation....

***

This wasn't just the usual FOBs from Park Avenue and Hollywood (though there were plenty of those cruising around). With so many world policy chiefs present -- Tony Blair, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Condi Rice, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, even Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, for heaven's sake -- the conference was a tour d'horizon of Clinton's life, and head, since the White House. (So that's what he's been doing on all those far-flung speaking gigs -- scarfing down public policy from the global minibar.) No one has figured out before how to leverage a post-presidency like this. Jimmy Carter's version has been about the power of example. Clinton's is about the power of power. He's been everywhere, met everyone (my favorite Clintonian aside: "As someone who went to Nigeria to plead for the life of a woman condemned under sharia law, I thank you for doing this."). Now he's putting that Rolodex to work for something bigger than the next campaign.

Welcome to Planet Clinton, an interconnected world that's a solar system and a wormhole away from Bush country. Here Shimon Peres and Oprah Winfrey are just members of the audience. Barbra Streisand looks like any peppy matron taking an extension course. Brad Pitt's staccato hair and Angelina Jolie's duvet lips (sighted in the audience of Jeffrey Sachs's poverty panel) are reduced to a responsible human scale. Wandering out of a kitchen exit I found myself in a milling informal think tank with the former president expounding to the two guys who founded Google and a sprightly "Planet of the Apes" figure who turned out to be Mick Jagger....

***

Clinton seems to have found his role as facilitator-in-chief, urging us to give up our deadly national passivity and start thinking things through for ourselves. Commandeering the role of government through civic action suddenly feels like a very empowering notion -- the alternative being to find oneself stranded in a flood waving a shirt from a rooftop.

It's an indicator of how the mood has changed that it was Al Gore who brought the house down. His Category 5 tirade on the impending calamity of unaddressed climate change electrified the lunch crowd. Who knew this Gore existed?...Like Clinton, Gore has been liberated by cauterized rage at what has happened to the country in the past five years....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102036.html

[CottonBear]

1. Excellent article. I miss Bill and Al. Sigh. n/t

[MarianJack]

3. Oh, I Don't Know,...

...whats so special about prosperity, peace, competent government and a leader who shows up for work and actually WORKS before vacation? :sarcasm:

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. I t hink this is a very positive role for him.

We need this. Oh, how we NEED this.

[KoKo]

4. It could have been an interesting article

if Tina Brown wasn't so obsessed with her "in crowd" reporting focusing her article on her "witty observations," than what was really discussed. It reads like a gossip column from a fluff magazine.

There's no doubt she's spinning Clinton and trying to make up for the fact that HER "in crowd" of "celebrity" all decided that the "Emperor-in-Thief" suddenly wasn't what they thought, and isn't it wonderful that the folks they loved to hate (Gore and Clinton) have now turned into the new Guru's for the rich, famous and entitled. :-(

I found this quote from the article really offensive. Because I'd like to know when the "cleaning out" our Corrupt Corporate CEO's has taken place? Don't see it from looking at the continueing scandals that have been coming out of Wall Street where very few have actually had to pay a price for their stealing and in fact their salaries have gone up since the Bushie came into power.

Thanks for the article. When we Americans can stop allowing people like Tina Brown decide who should be President we will all be the better for it. How about a Global Summit for Progressives from the Blogosphere where WE can come and listen to the people who have been out here creating the NEW MEDIA...and understand that WE were the ones working for change and not Tina Brown and "her crowd" of wealthy gawkers. Remember how we gave money to Move On. and petitition C-Span so that we could hear Al Gore, our true President, speak when no one in the NY/DC crowd wanted to know Al Gore still existed?

Quote:

Process, not perception, is king in boardrooms today. After so much corporate malfeasance it all got too dire to put up with fake CEOs anymore.

Now after the Iraq debacle, the ballooning deficit and the aftermath of Katrina, Americans are pining for grounded leaders in public office, too -- leaders who have moral conviction, yes, but also the gnarly, dexterous ability to think things through.

[11cents]

5. Tina Brown and her husband were *never* Bush supporters

You say:

"There's no doubt she's spinning Clinton and trying to make up for the fact that HER "in crowd" of "celebrity" all decided that the "Emperor-in-Thief" suddenly wasn't what they thought, and isn't it wonderful that the folks they loved to hate (Gore and Clinton) have now turned into the new Guru's for the rich, famous and entitled."

This kind of scattershot attack is worse than useless; it demonizes friends. I'm not a particular fan of Tina Brown, but she's never been a Bushie, and her husband Harold Evans was a very effective defender of Clinton against the hunters and impeachers.

And really, are "celebrities" a sigificant element of GOP support? Hollywood really is pretty Democratic, and the upper-West-side crowd epitomized by Tina Brown definitely is.

[justgamma]

6. I hope Rice learned something.

I can just see her comparing Clinton to Bush. Do you think she would at least take a pause to think it out?

:dilemma:

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Hmmmmmm. nt

[DeepModem Mom]

8. P.M. self-kick -- just noticed this is WP's top e-mailed story.