spanning time
Most people watch C-Span as often as they read their car’s operating manual. I know some people who have gone so far as to remove C-Span channels from their television’s channel memory.
I’ll admit that I’m not a C-Span junkie. Some programming on C-Span has a potential audience of 1, and that 1 is often not me. Every once in a while, though, they run a show that informs me in a way no other media outlet would.
Case in point: sometime last week I watched a lecture that Bill Clinton gave to a class at the University of Little Rock at Arkansas. The subject of the class was Clinton’s presidency, and while Clinton guest-speaking at a class on himself might be an exercise in surplus narcissism, I can’t begin to tell you how fascinating his lecture was.
I always placed Clinton as one of the best orators in American government (at least the American governments with which I’ve been familiar during my life). While I’m sure he didn’t always write his speeches (apparently we pay others to do that for our presidents), he certainly had a better command of the issues and ideas than Dubya. You know how when Dubya speaks he can only get out four or five words at a time? He has, all these annoying pauses, which render, his speeches, about as, fluid, , , as this, sentence. It’s as if he has a real small output buffer which needs to be flushed before more data can be inserted.
Just about all of Clinton’s discussion with the Little Rock class was extemporaneous. These kids (and professors as well) had obviously done their reading and threw some pretty interesting questions at him. His responses were extremely articulate and intelligent. They were also, I think, fair. He made some of the most interesting distinctions between Republican and Democratic policies and political strategies, and while his Democratic bias was certainly expressed, on just about every issue involving partisan politics, he described Democratic shortcomings as well as Republican shortcomings. He fessed up to his own failures and didn’t pull punches when it came to criticizing his party. He even credits Newt Gingrich for teaching him some very important political strategies. He discusses Somalia, Kosovo, Rowanda, the G7/G8, the differences between campaigning as a contender and campaigning as an incumbent, his high regard for George Bush, Sr., his failed gubernatorial election, Iraq before, during, and after his presidency, among many, many other things. He has, I think, a very good grasp of the differences between politics and “real life”, and for a politician, he seems to have managed to strike a good balance between the two (at least intellectually). The relatively informal classroom setting somehow enhanced the impression that he wasn’t talking as a politician, which, at least for me, gave his own critical analysis of his presidency that much more weight.
In any case, I can’t do justice to the discussion, so go see it for yourselves. It’s at C-Span’s website, but go quickly. C-Span only archives its videos for “15 days or less”, and the air date was May 23. I plan on recording at least the audio from the program, and now that I can burn DVDs, maybe I’ll record the video as well.
I don’t revere Clinton. There were (and are) plenty of issues to bitch about during his presidency. Given the current political climate, though, I can definitely say his presence in the Oval Office is sorely missed. Regardless of what you think of Clinton, I urge you to watch this C-Span program. I think there’s something in it for everyone.
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4 responses
selenium
Comment posted at 15:15 on Monday, June 02, 2003
He’s definitly not stupid that one. I often have to pinch myself to make sure he really was a US president.
How do you compare him to Tony? Just interested.
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Comment posted at 16:06 on Monday, June 02, 2003
It’s hard to say, really. I’m not as familiar with English issues as, say, an English person is, media coverage being what it was and is.
I do know this: I had great hopes for Blair. As a member of the Labour party (probably the closest analogy to US Democrats, right?), and especially after the economic and foreign policies of Thatcher and Major, he really pitched himself as something that he, sadly, has really turned out not to be. This is not the case with Bill Clinton, who I think was pretty much what we, perhaps very much unlike Hillary, expected him to be.
This isn’t to say that Clinton was a better president than Blair is a prime minister. I don’t think such comparisons are possible given the ocean (both literal and figurative) between American issues and British issues. I do think that this issue of self-representation, though, comes into play when discussing the two as speakers.
If one wants to consider Clinton a scheming bastard, one should recognize that relatively speaking, most of Clinton’s transgressions, were of a personal nature. I never really factored Whitewater or the Monica debacle into my thought’s on Clinton’s efficacy as president. So while we all saw him be smarmy and wiley on the Lewinsky video testimony (the infamous “it depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is”), it somehow didn’t strike me as a divergence from his character. He admitted to smoking marajuana, he made a saxophone-playing appeal to the MTV generation on the Arsenio Hall show (which, for me, was a much more criminal act than anything he did with Monica! I mean…it was the Arsenio Hall Show!)…that he was fast and loose in his personal life didn’t surprise me at all. All this to say that for me, Clinton’s [political] speeches were in some way more believable because for the most part he stuck to his political agenda throughout his career as president.
If one wants to analyze Blair, on the other hand, I’d have to say that his transgressions are more political, and thus have much greater consequences for his constituency. I’m speaking here not only of the siamese-twin position he’s recently taken up with Dubya, but of the gradual shift he’s taken through the years from a left-of-center political position to what for all intents and purposes is a center/center-right—maybe even close to far right—position on at least foreign policy. It could be argued his fiscal policy has also ‘steered to the right’ over the years, but in any case, in recent years (even before buddy-time with Dubya), while Tony’s speeches are definitely masterfully presented, I always wonder if he means what he says (or more to the point, I wonder if what he says is in line with the politics which he supposedly represents).
I don’t know if that makes much sense. You’ll have to consider the fact that while I probably keep up with foreign issues more than the average American, I really don’t have any real understanding of British politics, so perhaps Blair’s shift towards the right is in fact in line with what his constituency and his party expect him to represent. The recent mass exodus of ministers, though, would suggest otherwise.
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Comment posted at 17:59 on Tuesday, June 03, 2003
This is a mixed response - First, C-SPAN this weekend was broadcast from the publisher’s fall book preview show-convention in SF. I learned that Aaron McGruder looks only a little like Huey Freeman, and, as expected, he had interesting things to say. Said he did not want to criticize Bush too much, “After all, I don’t want to end up dead somewhere in a ditch. These are gangsters.” The man did say that. Let’s hope the airing of the comment will deter that outcome. It had to piss off folks in DC and in Crawford. Nobody listens to young Huey, though, so maybe he’s safe. I missed Michael Moore - he was on Sunday. Second, you mention Tony, do you know where John Major is now and who he’s hanging with. Find it. It’s easy to find. It figures. Third - I always wanted Clinton and Greenspan to do a sax duet, then Clinton to do a solo - Devil With the Blue Dress On. Maybe that song was a bit before your time, but with how Monicia had the evidence, it fits. Fourth - bad luck streak in dancing school - it looks like Zevon has been diagnosed with incurable lung cancer. At first I thought it a put-on, with the pic of him with his “treating physician” Hunter S. Thompson, [warrenzevon.com] but it looks to be true.
As to Blair, I check the Economist from time to time. The writing is all the same style, but sometimes funny, and their slant is from the Thatherrite [Thather-right] camp. However, they are not too unhappy with Blair, hence, your analysis is on point. He is still dodging the euro camp, and hence must cozy up to George II. The Brits are serious about integrating their financial regulatory effort, securities, banking ,insurance, and other regulation into one ministry, not Balkanized as with our government. I do not think the central bank will be rolled into the scheme, however. British markets are integrated into Europe, and world-wide. With a larger Islamic population than the US, but less than France, Blair took a risk. There is the story that Clinton once told an overzealous liberal aide to remember that what “we” are closest to is Eisenhower Republicans, and there’s truth to that. Blair fits that characterization also.
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