Clinton Quotes

[Dardedar]

Clinton was on the Daily Show the other night. How refreshing to here a politician that can speak and articulate thoughts like an adult. And it sounds like his Global Initiative project is doing tremendous good.

***
Remnick On Clinton On Everything, Picked Up By Nothing

Huffington Post | Rachel Sklar | Posted Monday September 18, 2006

What do you get when you send esteemed and erudite New Yorker editor David Remnick around the world with the wildly popular former president of the United States, Bill Clinton, to talk about his life, work, legacy, and not-at-all-controversial-or-in-the-news-lately wife Hillary ? Quite a lot, actually: A massive 23-page story (with photos, poems and cartoons, but still) with anecdotes, frank exchanges, keen insights and some really, really good soundbytes. What you don't get is a link: The piece is not available online. Which means that what you also don't get is any online presence. At all.

Which for a piece like this is saying something. Before I list a few of the gems you'll find if you, too, invest the thirteen hours needed to read it all, I will note one quote from Clinton: "I am sick of Karl Rove's bullshit." Incredibly, one week after publication, a search for "I am sick of Karl Rove's bullshit" on Google will yield one hit: A link to ABC's "The Note" that actually takes you to the wrong link and requires a search through the archives and then moving forward a few pages before a measly excerpt may be had. What does this tell us? It tells us that the New Yorker PR department needs to send their press releases out more widely online (and make it available the next week somewhere other than Google cache), and that the New Yorker can't rely on Remnick's cachet, Clinton's galvanizing popularity and the tantalizing possibility of Republican trashtalk to bring a 23-page article to life in the blogosphere without a little help.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of nuggets from the piece; those looking for a precis can find one of sorts in the New Yorker PR dept's aforementioned 1,066-word account, as well as a New Yorker Q&A with Remnick here.

* Clinton on Rove: "I am sick of Karl Rove's bullshit."

* Clinton on the Kerry campaign: "Like a deer caught in the headlights."

* Clinton on watching the World Cup Final in Berlin: "I'm totally psyched for this."

* Clinton on the vote to go into Iraq: "I'm sick and tired of being told that if you voted for authorization you voted for the war. It was a mistake, and I would have made it, too....The administration did not shoot straight on the nuclear issue or on Saddam's supposed ties to Al Qaeda prior to 9/11."

* Chelsea on her father's handling of the AIDS crisis after writing a thesis on the subject at Oxford: "I gave you a grade," she told her father. "What did I get?" Clinton asked. "C-plus." Her rationale: "You didn't do nearly enough. But you did more than anyone else in the world."

more

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Where is the actual article? I followed the link and read the Q&A with Remnick, but I'd like to read the whole thing. Huffington started out as a Republican, but she's been moving steadily "left" over the last 5 years (actually middle has been moving steadily "right").

[Dardedar]

Where is the actual article? I followed the link and read the Q&A with Remnick, but I'd like to read the whole thing.

DAR
That's all we have unless you buy the issue I guess. As the above article says:

"The piece is not available online. Which means that what you also don't get is any online presence. At all."

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Worth a try. Rats. Yes, the Global Initiative seems to be doing very well. Some people have fits at Clinton's claims of progress - saying other groups have been working on the problem long before the Clinton Foundation got involved, but Clinton's "we" has never been the "royal", but has always meant whatever group he was working with. That is and always has been his genius - getting people to work together efficiently. When you consider he's got Barbra Streisand and Rupert Murdoch working together on the global warming initiative, you can see he's good at it. I love his quote, "I can't remember from one day to the next who my enemies are supposed to be."

Sirota continues to have a fit about Clinton because of the NAFTA thing - and can't seem to understand that Clinton had to find out the hard way about attaching environmental and labor protections to the original treaty - it can't be worked out later, because business will make sure there is no later on those subjects. But Clinton has used market forces to reduce the price of AIDS drugs and get them distributed in the most impoverished areas. He also used market forces to get more efficient refrigerators and hybrid cars on the market when he was president. His Global Initiative is largely based on getting big enough groups together to use market forces to accomplish things that the market itself keeps trying to block. (Hogeye should love it - NGOs doing the work that our current government refuses to.)

The folks in Rwanda actually love the guy ("he's the only one who's apologized") - and anybody who is tired of the current group, even if they didn't particularly care for Clinton (I'm not talking about the Clinton-phobes here, just the moderate Rs and liberal Dems) must appreciate that he takes personal responsibility for not helping in Rwanda - another "buck stops here" person, unlike...