Last week saw a generous number of Flyer hands on
deck in Little Rock for the annual convention of the Association of Alternative
Newsweeklies. A feature of the event was a tour of the Clinton Museum on the
Arkansas River, and to top that came a luncheon address from the man himself on
Saturday, the last day of the convention.
As is virtually always the case with Clinton appearances,
the former president spoke at length on a number of subjects, foreign and
domestic, and gave detailed, even wonkish, answers in a Q-and-A session later
on. He then indulged the visiting journalists, who more or less mobbed him, for
an hour and a half of one-on-one conversation and autograph-signing. (He’s
probably the only public person who could simultaneously sign someone’s baby
picture while analyzing the “concentration of wealth” in America with someone
else.)
In the Q and A, Clinton opined, inter alia, that Ralph
Nader may have launched his independent presidential candidacy in 2000 for
the express purpose of wrecking then Vice President AlGore‘s own
hopes. “He wanted George Bush to be president!” Clinton declared.
Ironically enough, Clinton declined to offer anything
resembling harsh criticism of Bush himself, acknowledging that one reason was a
growing personal closeness to former president George H.W. Bush, the
current president’s father, with whom he has collaborated in a number of
charitable undertakings (a post-Katrina fundraising effort, especially).
But while expressing strong disagreement with George W.
Bush on a variety of policy matters, he also credited the president with
sincerity in his beliefs.
Clinton was also somewhat guarded in answering a question
about the presidential ambitions of his wife, New York Senator Hillary
Clinton. She hasn’t decided on a run, Clinton said, but if she did, she’d
run well and, if elected, would serve well. His own role? “Whatever she wants me
to do.”
Earlier in the day, Susan McDougal, one of Clinton’s
former partners in the failed Whitewater real-estate enterprise, addressed
conference participants on her refusal to testify during Special Counsel
Kenneth Starr‘s ultimately futile investigation of that affair. McDougal
served a year in prison for “civil contempt,” as a result, and one questioner
wondered if she harbored ill will toward the then president for his failure to
pardon her until after her incarceration.
“Not at all!” McDougal answered, declaring her belief that
Clinton, by presiding over an era of peace and prosperity, was “the greatest
president this country has ever had.”
Informed of that, Clinton – who has not met with McDougal,
by her reckoning, in 20 years – appeared moved. “She may have undergone the same
kind of ennobling experience in prison that [former South African premier]
Nelson Mandela had,” he said.