Fascinating Esquire interview with Bill Clinton. Obama. Health Care. Al Gore

[wyldwolf]

Too much to excerpt. But the part on the alternate history of the 2000 election is great:

"I think if Al Gore had become president... first of all, let me inject a little humility here: No one knows. But for example, as Colin Powell said when he was secretary of state, our policies with North Korea had led us back from the brink, and we were on the verge of getting a total ban on these missile flights and completing the total denuclearization of the peninsula. I expect that would've happened, and if that had happened, I think it is highly likely that the kind of tensions we've seen in the past few months, including the situation involving those two young women, they might not have happened."

"I think he would've had a much more vigorous Securities and Exchange Commission. Could some of this have still happened? Maybe, but we were up on some of this in 2000, up on Capitol Hill, warning that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were getting overexposed, and their real problems didn't happen until four years after that. So I think whatever happened in the economic downturn would've been less.

I'm reluctant, because I was not there, to talk about the run-up to 9/11, but I can always say this: Al Gore was hypervigilant in his following of the intelligence reports and very solid in his understanding of the defense and security policy, and I think he would've done a really good job. I think that he would have been reluctant to fight a war on two fronts; I think he would've tried to finish the business with Al Qaeda and Afghanistan and let the UN inspectors finish what they were doing in Iraq. So yeah, it would've been a very different time."

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/bill-clinton-interview-1009?click=pp#ixzz0QXau4aJW

[roguevalley]

1. Al Gore, the road not taken. :(

[diane in sf]

2. Al Gore is not a member of PNAC and would not have LIHOP or MIHOP.

[Autumn]

3. What a great insightful article. That

man is brilliant. My favorite paragraph:

"And every day, I mean no matter what happened — whether they were trying to impeach me or there was some damn hearing where I was catching hell for something — I tried to get up and I tried to remember somebody like that. That's all the Democrats need to do today. They just need to remember that there's a reason we win: We win when people feel that their country doesn't care about them anymore, and they've got to have a little help, and that we can make a new beginning. And Barack Obama symbolized for a lot of people a new beginning totally wired to the twenty-first century. And all the rest of us, all we have to do is just keep that in mind. We've got to just stand and deliver, over and over and over again. That's what sustained me for all eight years — I didn't give a damn what was in the headlines that day, I just got up and remembered somebody I knew who needed a president and needed us to try and do something, and that's all that matters." Part of the last line: " All we gotta do is stand and deliver. And I believe that with all my heart. "

That is what the Democrats have to do .:woohoo:



I can't wait for his book to come out.

[dionysus]

4. all in all the big dawg is a stand-up guy.

[Autumn]

5. Yes he is n/t

[dionysus]

6. i rarely get into what-if scenarios, but it would be fun to see how he would have campaigned against

chimpy or mccain...

[Autumn]

7. That would be something to see

I know he would have mopped the floor with either one. Could you imagine a debate between either of those two idiots and Bill? :spray: Al Gores mistake was in distancing himself from Bills presidency. Had he used Bill in his campaign, chimpy would never have gotten so close.

[dionysus]

8. yes, distancing himself the way he did backfired. i can see the logic behind it, but it was a poor

choice.

[CreekDog]

9. Too bad we don't have one person/one vote or it would have been different

:banghead: