Actually, I was on a weekend trip to the mountains with family (rainy but nice) and didn't see the interview. But the clip is online here.
A better response for Clinton would seem to have been something like this: (Indulgent smile with slight look of boyish contrition, not carried to the lip-biting level) "Well, I admit we made some mistakes in the 1990s, and I'm sure President Bush has made some too. But the real question is where we go from here, and . . . "
He knows that, too, I suspect. So why did he respond the way he did?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Clinton and bin Laden and the perils of citing Richard Clarke: "even a casual reading of Clarke's book reveals that it was one of the more important sources for 'The Path To 9/11,' the ABC miniseries that so irritated the Clintonites. For that reason and many others, I wouldn't want more people reading Clarke's book if I were Clinton."
MORE: Still more history here. Clinton is apparently forgetting his own Administration's public positions, including those taken in the 1998 indictment of Osama bin Laden. Once again, I think his reaction was very unwise, and likely to harm Democratic prospects this fall.
What's struck me most, in the context of these recent events, is just how extremely *protective* of Clinton liberals (e.g. blogs & blog commenters) have become. This isn't surprising, and it's not a negative thing per se: cf. the protectiveness of Bush on the right, especially when he's being assailed (unfairly & dishonestly, in their view) by the media. The comparison is illuminating, of course, because Bush does very little public self-defending against his harshest critics (and never complains of being 'victimized' by the media)-- though of course commenters on the right do that for him. Clinton, with these recent actions, is (I think) trying to tap into a similar dynamic-- e.g. trying to tap into the (surprising-- and surprisingly mainstream) surge of protectiveness & feeling for him during the impeachment saga. (And lest we forget, that was the origin of moveon.org, wasn't it.) . . .
I do think it's likely that his latest public acts are a kind of strategic gamble, specifically directed at the left (rallying it for Hillary, who can then do what she needs to do to convince the center)-- (and the left is eating it up aren't they, he's playing them like a piano)--- more likely than that this last outburst was an 'accident' (esp. when the questioning was *so* to be expected-- he himself practically *asked* for it, in making such a big deal of the 9/11 movie).
