Salon/Conason: The Salon Interview: Bill Clinton

[kskiska]

The former president blasts the Bush-Cheney rush to war, explains why Gore lost in 2000 and tells how Kerry can win in 2004.

(snip)

Speaking of yellowcake, how would you have handled the "outing" of a CIA agent such as Valerie Plame Wilson by officials in your administration? Do you think that Bush's response was adequate?

Well, I'm not sure what he did. I would have done my best to find out who did it, fire them, and make sure they had to live with the consequences ... I know Joe Wilson. He was a career diplomat, a straight-up professional guy who did a lot of valuable work for me and for America in Africa. What happened to his wife was unforgivable as well as illegal -- and potentially dangerous, and damaging to our intelligence networks. And it plainly came from someone who didn't like the fact that Joe didn't give the accepted line . So it's hard for me to believe they can't find out who outed her. And I would have gone to extraordinary lengths to find that out, and then taken the appropriate steps.

(snip)

Did Al Gore make an error in 2000 by seeking to put some distance between himself and his campaign for the presidency, and you and your administration?

In the beginning, I supported his going out on his own with Joe Lieberman, because every vice president has the same problem in running directly for the presidency. People don't give the vice president credit for the good things that happen in the administration, as much as they should. I tried to solve that by giving Al lots of credit all through the eight years, but don't absorb that ... I thought Gore ought to be independent ...

But I thought it was not a good idea to not embrace the record more explicitly and say we ought to keep the change going in the right direction. Remember in Los Angeles, he said the issue was the people versus the powerful, which it certainly was. Every powerful right-wing interest group in the country was behind Bush. But that didn't send a clear signal that it was necessary to vote for Gore to keep the prosperity going. At the end of the election, when Gore came back to that theme, about eight days before Election Day, he made up points in a hurry and actually won the election by about 500,000 votes ... He probably would have won by enough to stay out of the Supreme Court if that had been the theme from August straight through November ... I campaigned in California and Arkansas, and those were the states where we beat the three incumbent Republicans that lost in the House.

I believe Al lost Arkansas because of the National Rifle Association ... and maybe Missouri, and maybe Tennessee, and maybe New Hampshire (in addition to the Nader vote) ... I don't think the NRA got near as much credit as they deserve for Bush's election. They hurt us bad.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/25/clinton/index.html