Do I think we should obsess on Clinton and devote all our efforts to getting him prosecuted? No. I would be glad to leave him in obscurity.
The problem is that he won't go away, and the media gives him inordinate attention. They do this to stick him in our face, not because they think we want to see him.
And does he ever say anything helpful or statesmanlike? No. He inevitable twists truth, plants seeds of doubt, runs down the country overseas, and generally violates every standard for proper behavior in a former president.
You say he can't cause harm? I will give you one example of his deliberate attempt to cause harm. In the run-up to the war with Iraq, President Bush and every other member of his administration cautioned that this would be hard, that lives would be lost, and it wouldn't be short.
Yet when we were in the "quagmire" frenzy of 2 weeks ago, the press accused President Bush of saying this would be a "cakewalk." He never said any such thing.
But the person making the most noise about this being a quick war and raising expectations was BILL CLINTON. He did it several times (including in PRINT in the London Times) and he did it with the full knowledge that he was raising expectations.
This is the kind of harm he does. Should the war have dragged on a bit longer before the tipping point was reached, he would have been out in front saying that it SHOULD have been quick, but Bush and Rumsfeld blew it. You know that is exactly what he would have done.
I am all for ignoring his silly comments which are obvious media grabs, but when he actively runs the country down in overseas speeches about our foreign policy, or when he tries to cause trouble by making people doubt our war-time leaders, I am NOT going to ignore him.
I am not as sanguine about him as you. I have seen him in action, and I know he envies and hates George Bush. He will do anything he can to harm him. Period.
I guess I should clarify, backtrack or whatever ... Bill Clinton certainly deserved censure for the comments you cited. I don't really have any problems with him being booed the other night. If I'd been there, I would've booed him too. Words can't express the contempt I have for that man.
However, I sincerely believe that there are folks not just here but at other forums ... and I frequent several ... who obsess about the guy to an unhealthy extent.
I think the problem with the right and Bill Clinton today is the same thing which contributed to him playing us like a cheap tom-tom drum for eight years. Namely, we made it personal instead of keeping it strictly business. I don't think it was ever personal to Bubba, it was just business, the way the game was played. Like Michael Corleone told his brother Sonny before he killed Sollozzo in "The Godfather" ... yes I know that's fictional, but I think the analogy is valid ... "It's not personal, it's business." I think then and now our side made it personal.
I don't know if I've ever posed this on FR in the five years I've been a member, but on another forum I speculated that a big reason for the personal animus toward Clinton has to do with the fact that in a lot of ways we're still fighting the battle of the '60s, and especially to an element of the social conservatives who think this country's gone to hell in a handbasket over the last 40 years, Clinton was from day one perceived as the ultimate product of the '60s, a long-haired, dope-smoking, free-loving, hedonistic libertine and radical, and it was viewed as sacrilege that somebody like that would bamboozle the American public enough to be elected president.
Anyway, again, because of that a lot of folks on our side have always made it personal against him, and while he was president that clouded our judgment and actions in a lot of ways and helped him jerk us around righteously where we had enough ammo and advantages to have done a lot better than we did against him.
Plus I think we refused to accept the reality that just doing the right thing and following principles, hoping that good would defeat evil in the end, etc., wasn't enough when you were in a battle royal with a street fighter. Because while as I said, I don't think it was ever that personal with Bubba ... I think Hillary is a committed socialist, but in his heart of hearts I don't think Bubba really gives two ca-cas about anything but satisfying his urges ... he's a street fighter and would do anything and use anything to win. And we kept trying to be high minded and above the fray instead of getting down in the gutter with him. That shouldn't be an offensive concept to people, IMHO ... top-level politics isn't a place for niceties. We did go to the mat on impeachment, true, but never did when it came to policy issues, plus we underestimated the value of perceptions and P.R. And we paid the price in both areas.
Bottom line, yes Clinton can still draw an audience and yes the media hangs on his every word. But every year that passes, and the farther we get away from his presidency, that will change. Plus as I said, IMHO he's preaching to the choir. He's not going to sway one opinion that's not already anti-conservative.
And as soon as Hillary runs and is crushed, that's when the decline into true irrelevance will start for that crowd.
That's why I wish she'd just go ahead and run in '04 so that we can get this battle engaged, because when it does happen IMHO that very well could be Armaggedon in the war between left and right in this country and a defining moment in this country's political history.
Some folks in this thread have been hard on the American people for electing Bubba twice. I've given my .02 about why that happened, the factors that I think contributed to it. Maybe I'm naive, but I still have faith that now that he's out of office, what Bubba says will go in one ear and out the other of the middle of the country.