Controlled Burn
Bill Kristol, among others, thinks that Bill Clinton’s ridiculous outburst at Chris Wallace this weekend was a contrived performance intended to strengthen the Democrats’ image as that of passionate patriots, concerned about national security (emphases mine):
In this interview, Clinton rallied Democrats. He reminded them of their talking points on Bush’s alleged passivity in his first eight months in office (remember Richard Clarke!), and on the alleged distraction posed by Iraq from the more worthwhile war in Afghanistan. He nicely laid the predicate for the leaked portions of the National Intelligence Estimate that appeared in the press the next day. If the Bush-Rove war-on-terror offensive stalls out this week (and much of the media is committed to making this happen), and Democrats do well in November, Bill Clinton can take credit, at a crucial moment, for discrediting the terror issue as a mere political ploy, and showing Democrats how “to fight back” and how “to stand up to the right-wing propaganda machine” (in the words of Howard Dean).
Maybe this is so. But I happen to subscribe to the far more narcissistic explanation that Kristol proceeds to next:
Clinton wants to make it incorrect, or at least impolite, to criticize his record on terror. Chris Wallace stood up to him. Will others? Will his next interviewer raise the same set of questions? Will they be willing to take the criticism of being “conservative hit men” or part of the vast, Fox-centered right-wing conspiracy? Bullying and intimidation sometimes work. Clinton has used both effectively in the past. Now he wants to put out of bounds certain perfectly legitimate and straight-forward questions.
That, to me, is the bottom line —and it’s all of a piece with the Clintonistas’ recent attempts at bullying and censoring ABC over that Path to 9/11 miniseries. Bill Clinton knows that his response to Osama was feckless, impotent, and scapegoated —and he hates the idea that there might be people in this country who know it.
