Why I still love Bill Clinton

(Besides the fact that he gets to hang out with Bono and Nelson Mandela…)

Put simply, he still enunciates what I believe as well as or better than I could.

He did the Sunday morning news shows last weekend, ostensibly to do P.R. for his new tome “Giving.” (Getting published is the easiest thing in the world if you’re an ex-president. I’ll bet even Dumbleyou releases a ghost-written memoir of his years as master of all time, space and dimension after he is escorted out of office by a grateful populace in January, 2009.)

Of course Mr. Clinton’s book-tour stop was only the window dressing; he was there to campaign for his wife. That’s what politicians do, especially politicians as adroit as former president Clinton. Fish gotta swim, ducks gotta quack…

Anyhow, I forget which show it was – it was either Tim Russert on Meet The Press or former aide George Stephanopolis on ABC – that hit him with the now-famous torture question and answer from the last Democratic debate, when Russert told the candidates about a former Meet The Press guest’s endorsement of torture as a means of ‘intelligence-gathering’ in a ticking-clock, Jack Bauer-type scenario, then asked Hillary if she agreed with it. After Mrs. Clinton carefully outlined an anti-torture position contrary to the example set forth, Russert hit her with his “gotcha” moment – the Meet The Press guest had been her husband, Bill Clinton!

She responded with the signature sound-byte of that debate, “Well, he’s not the one standing up here.” Booya! I don’t know if the response was off-the-cuff or if she’d had it waiting for the right opportunity to unveil, but she nailed it. She looked smart and tough and not beholding to anyone else’s opinion, not even her former-president husband’s.

It was a great moment of political theater, but not what I sat down to write about.

Last Sunday the TV interviewer played Mr. Clinton the clip, then asked him to clarify his position on torture as American Intelligence policy. And I thought the answer he gave nailed it; ie, it conformed precisely to my own long-held opinion on the subject.

He said that the policy of the United States government must always be no-wiggle-room anti-torture, and he checked off the list of reasons why. But then he said, in the face of an imminent-annihilation-scenario such as Russert had laid out for him on Meet The Press, if an agent in the field makes the decision that torture is the only chance to extract vital information in the compromised timeframe outlined, then that agent must proceed knowing that if he or she (let’s not forget Sydney Bristow!) is successful in extracting the information and averting the catastrophe, he or she will be held to full legal account of their extra-legal actions in defense of the country.

Nailed it! The government must not condone or endorse torture, but if it’s really, absolutely the last card in the deck, and if an agent in the field proceeds with torture as a last resort, he or she must do so in the knowledge that he or she is committing a crime and – should western civilization as we know it survive – be expected to be held to account to for it afterwards.

It was masterstroke of triangualtion. He took neither his former position nor Hillary’s current one, and offered an explanation that embraced them both. It gave me damn goosebumps, and not just because he was saying on TV what I have privately believed all along. After suffering though the embarrassingly unintelligible sentence constructions of so many recent Dumbleyou press conferences, and with grim memories of the marble-mouthed campaigns of John Kerry and Al Gore, it was a thrill to watch a political master at work, still at the top of his game and more importantly, pitching for our side.

As a matter of official policy, the government of the United States must stand firmly opposed to any and all forms of coercive interrogation; but if you absolutely, positively have to have the information by tomorrow, you’d better be prepared to suffer the consequences.

After all, that’s what presidential pardons are for...