[link|http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/2974530.htm|Carefully separating cause from effect]

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON - (AP) -- Former President Clinton says he
regrets the last-minute pardon he gave to fugitive financier
Marc Rich because it has tarnished his reputation.

Asked if he would do it again, ''probably not, just for the
politics,'' he said in an interview with Newsweek magazine
released Sunday. ``It was terrible politics. It wasn't worth the
damage to my reputation. But that doesn't mean the attacks
were true.''

A list of 177 pardons and clemencies was released by the
Clinton White House just hours before Clinton left office and
George W. Bush was sworn in.

Since then, they have been investigated by federal prosecutors
and Congress.

That scrutiny, Clinton said, made him ``just angry that after I
worked so hard and after all that money had been spent
proving that I never did anything wrong for money, that I'd get
mugged one more time on the way out the door.''

I say:

This guy is at least as self righteous as Nixon. Poor little me, everyone's out to get me, it's just not fair. At least Nixon had the good grace to shut up and slink away.

He doesn't get it, because he can't get it. It's like he's got a congenital blind spot. He simply can't conceive of anything in other than political terms. He has no self image outside of polling figures and the adulations of his slowly shrinking fanbase. That's the only mirror he can see himself in. Only if he could see beyond himself would what passes for his soul ever find rest. In the meantime, he wanders the earth as an undead horse.