[link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64912-2001Dec5.html|He's got his library, but the battle for the legacy continues]

Excerpt:

Before picking up his shovel, Clinton gave what by the standards of this lifetime campaigner was a fairly subdued statement of his case. There were boasts about an eight-year period of "peace, prosperity, social justice and social progress," but also a blunt reference to the failure of his first-term effort to pass health care reform. He sermonized about the virtues of public service and the perils of the world after Sept. 11. There was, inevitably, a reference to that "bridge to the 21st century," the metaphor Clinton rode with merciless repetition to reelection in 1996. And there was one clear jab at his successor, President George W. Bush.

The jab came when Clinton talked about how people will be able to read the documents that explain presidential decisions once "the classification period ends -- and at this library it will end." One of Bush's recent executive orders would allow presidents and former presidents to extend the period during which documents are sealed. Presidential scholars have called that order an assault on history and many skeptics have said Bush is trying to protect his father and others from embarrassing exposures about their actions during the Reagan-Bush years.

After the ceremony, Clinton friend and White House lawyer Bruce Lindsey jokingly offered another reason there is no great urgency to keeping Clinton records sealed: They've all been released already under subpoena...

I say:

The defeat of that health care thing is his only regret? No mea culpas about blowing off terrorism intelligence, selling our foreign policy to the hghest bidder (China), letting our military go downhill, and lying to the American people? That tells us all we need to know about his character.

Don't like Ashcroft? Blame Clinton. If Clinton had been less feckless in dealing with bin Laden, Ashcroft would never have been in a position to do what he's doing now.

And that wasn't peace and prosperity. That was denial and looting our national defense (Social Security too) to throw a six year long party. And now the bill has come due. But he has no regrets about that at all. And those union picketers and historical preservation buffs can go pound sand, `coz he's got his library and that's what matters. Social justice. Whatever.

Excerpt:

Conservatives have derided him for not doing more to confront global terrorism (including some of the same people who derided a Clinton effort to kill Osama bin Laden with missile strikes in 1998 as an attempt to divert attention away from that year's sex scandal and the impeachment that followed). But there has been no corresponding effort on the Democratic side to argue opposing points -- such as the successful quashing of terrorist attacks planned for the 2000 New Year, or that Bush's success in enlisting Russia in the fight against terrorism was foreshadowed by Clinton's enlisting the Russian military in the 1996 Bosnian intervention.

I say:

That's because the points are so weak they're embarrassed to make them. It would be grasping at straws.