[Homestead] Clinton's latest achievement

Gene GeRue genegerue at ruralize.com
Thu Sep 22 16:22:33 EDT 2005


Now we know how many "friends in China" he must have made, and who "our 
friends in China" are.   He had me guessing for eight years.


Clinton remains a hero to me. And he's getting better. For a look at what 
he's up to today, go to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102036.html

It starts with this:

Bill Clinton, Beyond the White House

By Tina Brown

Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page C01

The big surprise of Bill Clinton's Global Initiative conference at the 
Sheraton Hotel in New York last week was how strangely calming it was. You 
would expect to emerge begging for mercy from a three-day talkathon on the 
world's most intractable problems emceed by history's most garrulous 
president -- especially if you were a survivor of one of his book tour gigs.

To be sure, Clinton, the big intellectual showoff, had never been less than 
brilliant on his feet, but he never knew when to stop. And all that 
promiscuous lateral thinking ended up sucking the air out of the room. We 
got so tired of his lack of discipline that by 2000 we thought we were 
ready for a presidency that operated by assertion. Five years later we see 
what that's brought.
	
Today the former president looks like a wiser man (and it's not just the 
glasses).

Maybe it's the effect of his brush with death. He's pared himself down to 
the essentials, symbolized by the slimmed physique and the paternal reading 
glasses. His style was always inclusive even when he was on the attack. But 
now you feel he's shed the psychic baggage of the impeachment years and 
with it the toxic rock and roll of his constantly roiling reputation.

The new, honed Clinton on the rostrum made sure that any earnest 
hand-wringing grappled with the raw brutality of irreconcilables. He even 
saw to it that the panels he moderated actually ran on time.

Every session began






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