A Remarkable Interview

09/17/2005

Paul Munnis

Last night we were treated to a 30 minute interview with former President Bill Clinton on the Larry King Live Show. This interview was used for many purposes and one of them was to level-set Democrats on Katrina and the War in Iraq. The former president sought to show by example the proper behavior for Democrats during this stressful period for America.

One of the admonitions that he gave was to concentrate first and foremost on the victims of the storm and to assure the recovery and support of the people who were impacted. He said rightly that a bi-partisan Washington inquiry, conducted in parallel with relief efforts, over the federal response to hurricane Katrina, was right and proper and thus must happen. His belief is that the investigation needs to focus on fact finding for the purposes of constructive criticism and reform in order to make changes needed to assure American citizens of adequate future emergency preparedness.

On Iraq he was quite clear. We shouldn’t be there but we are, we shouldn’t have fought a war there but we did, we now need to do whatever we can to make a success of the situation. His feeling was that the politics looks pretty poor on the surface but there is still some hope for salvage and that the U.S. must play through trying to build upon the hope and salvage the situation for the benefits of the Iraqi people. Our national goal must now become one of working with the Iraqi’s to create a nation they can take over, manage, and run for the common good. Democrats must support that salvage effort hating the sins that were committed but working for the good of the Iraqi people.

The former president went on to report on the work that his foundation is doing on the major goals they adopted and he focused on peace and poverty reminding us that they are closely coupled. If you want peace then you must control poverty. He showed us how by working on common elements of mutual areas of interest it is possible for political opponents to work together to formulate programs that both can agree upon and work together upon. He did this by illustrating international work that he is doing with conservatives and social democrats all over the world to craft agreed upon goals, to privately fund the efforts, to obtain pledges from many others for specific contributions (not all financial) and to focus their joint efforts on accomplishing them. In this rather subtle way he reminded Democrats that we need to do more than complain about government, we need to support joint efforts at forming positive goals for our nation and then work to achieve them. In other words, it was a call to bi-partisanship.

The work that his foundation is doing with religious leaders around the world to assure that religion is not a pretext for power grabs, for killing of innocents, and as a justification for immoral behavior, was a revelation. He is bringing together men and women who are religious leaders in order to obtain commitments from them at the private level and not achievable at the international diplomatic level. He assured us that this was what he should be doing at this time in his life and he also assured us that running the UN as a replacement for Mr. Annan was not something that he aspires to. He seeks to complement the UN efforts and to work with the UN on mutual goals but not to use his position to create accidental or politically inspired government polarization.

This was a remarkable interview from a man who deeply believes that the purpose of politics is to carry out many of the tenants of Christianity by feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, clothing the naked, and providing hope for the poor. That is the real call to being a Democrat, working for the common good, and we are true to our political beliefs only when we are working on making that happen. One comment the former president made was that the New Testament mentions over 500 times the call to care for the poor but it makes no mention of abortion (yes, that did exist in the time of Christ), or any of the many other wedge issues used to divide Americans by those seeking to change the U.S. Constitution for their own ends.

Mr. Clinton spoke of Hillary’s possible quest for the White House and said he was working to assure that she won her Senate race, an essential predicate to further national ambition.

For me the former president served up a solid reminder that politics must be based upon a foundation of human decency and compassion for others and that we Democrats must stay true to our traditions. The demand upon us is to treat people with dignity and respect while focusing our creativity and energy in improving the lot of the poor. This mission will never go away and that is why a Democratic Party will always endure. He urges us to work for positive outcomes and to leave destruction of successful social programs to others who in the long run cannot succeed because their agenda is just flat wrong and people have enough sense to see it. Those who want to destroy our society will fail while those who want to improve society will have lots of company of the men and women of good will who are not selfishly motivated. This is a message that we Democrats need to hear especially in these times of national stress.