Great job, Bill Clinton
I was tough on Bill Clinton (and Hillary Clinton) during the 2008 campaign, on my blog and on the radio. Like many African-Americans, I had what you might call a disharmonious divergence from my former status as a “Clinton Democrat,” due to the harshness of the primary campaign with Barack Obama. So I think it’s only fair that I be equally effusive in praising the former president when he does good. Well, Bill Clinton, you “done good.”
According to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell (on MSNBC this morning),Clinton stepped in when negotiations being worked through by his former vice president, Current TV chief Al Gore, went as far as they could go — North Korea didn’t want Gore to come and retrieve the detained journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who had been held since March. They wanted the former president. And so, this time according to CNN, after “due dilligence” and a briefing by the Obama administration, the husband of our secretary of state flew to North Korea, gave the kook NK dictator his photo op, and brought the two women home to their families. I’m sure more details of the dramatic rescue mission will unfold (journalists love this stuff, and I’m sure the made-for-TV movie, books and feature films are already being cooked up in the minds of New York and Hollywood…) but for now, what we know is that a coordinated mission between three once disparate factions of the Democratic Party — the Gore, Clinton and Obama wings — came together with a phenomenal result:
I’m sure right wingers won’t be able to bring themselves to be happy for the families of these women, or to join the rest of the nation in thanking the former president on behalf of all decent members of the human family. But no matter. Who needs them. Thank you, President Clinton, for a job well done. Once again, I think we’ve established that Republicans may make a lot more noise, but Democrats actually get things done.
Cross-posted at Open Salon.
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