The unlikely alliance between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush may be ruffling a few familial feathers. See this fun snippet from New York Magazine: Our favorite moment of the press conference was when a reporter asked Bush about Bill Clinton's Monday statement that the first thing Hillary would do as president would be to send Clinton and the former President Bush ("41") around the world "to tell them that America is open for business and cooperation again." So, what did the current President Bush think of that?
"41 didn't think it was necessary," he laughed coldly. "Sounds like it would be a one-man trip."
Do we hear a note of tension among White House inhabitants past and present? Come on, Presidents. Share and share alike.
Alice Fishburn
Bill Clinton has been under scrutiny in the US for his claim that he opposed the Iraq war: From the beginning
Is this true?
Allow me to help.
One of Bill Clinton's fullest early statements on the war was made here in the UK on the morning of the Commons debate that immediately preceded the conflict itself.
His argument twists and turns, before eventually asking the left to trust Blair.
But in the end it is pretty clear that he did not oppose the war from the beginning.
He blames the French and the Russians for failing to support Blair's second resolution and says that this let the diplomatic effort down. He then calls for Blair to be trusted, knowing that this was advising Labour MPs to support the war.
It is just about possible for Mr Clinton to sustain the claim that he did not support the war from the beginning but impossible on the basis of this text to maintain that he opposed it.
Read it yourself.
...and your enemies closer. Is it the logic behind this political maxim that accounts for Bill Clinton's long lunch recently with Richard Mellon Scaife?
That's right. The same Richard Mellon Scaife who bankrolled investigations into Clinton's alleged drug-taking, supported rumours that he was behind an aide's death and stood at the heart of Hillary's 'vast-right wing conspiracy.'
As Newsweek puts it: His lawyer, Yale Gutnick, says Bill Clinton and Richard Mellon Scaife are now members of a "mutual admiration society." Cue the apocalyse.
We can only assume that Kenneth Starr's booked in for next Tuesday.
Alice Fishburn
Time for another FORA video. Here, the former President discusses climate change, America's standing in the world and how he still has a whole lot to do.
If the video does not appear on your browser, click here
Alice Fishburn
 The Right certainly are. Check out this bizarre little nugget from Jay Cost:
Many people on the right see Hillary (and, of course, Bill) as devils. A Google search of "Hillary Clinton devil" yielded 1.25 million hits. Wow.
Wow indeed. And why are they scared? Here's his answer: It was obvious to the right from all the way back in 1992 that the Clintons were not worthy of the office. And yet, despite the right's best efforts, the Clintons beat the elder Bush. In 1996 (or at least in 1995), the right was convinced they finally had the Clintons' number. They had raised taxes, tried to socialize medicine, and so on. 1994, the right thought, was a harbinger of the Clintons' electoral doom. Nope. Clinton won handily. Finally, in 1998 the right was convinced that they had them. The Lewinsky affair would surely end their reign, they thought. Again, no way. Lewinsky brought down Gingrich, not Clinton!
Every time, the right has been left scratching its head and wondering, "How in the hell did they beat us again?!" They've never had a good answer to the question.
So despite Bill's murky past, Hillary - as this New Yorker piece suggests - is running on a single issue ticket: her husband's legacy. Hillary’s advisers argue that the obvious lesson of [the failed campaigns of Howard Dean and John Kerry] is that invoking Democratic resentment about [Bill] Clinton’s ideological and personal failings does not work. But his prominence this time makes the strategy irresistible. “The whole race is going to end up there,” a spokesman for one of Hillary’s rivals told me. “It has to, because that’s what she’s running on. She’s running on Bill Clinton. If she were running on her Senate record or some new ideas for the future, rather than the nineties, it would be different. But her biggest strength is Bill Clinton, so the only way to attack her is to take that head on.”
Murad Ahmed
I've long argued that anyone wanting to understand the Blair years, indeed anyone wanting to understand political strategy full stop, should read Dick Morris's book Behind the Oval Office, the history of his years as adviser to Bill Clinton. (I particularly recommend the edition with the original memos, but that's not essential).
But this morning Gavin Esler's excellent BBC radio show, The Clinton Years, (which you can find and listen to here) made me realise that even so, I had underestimated the importance of the Clinton-Morris relationship to UK politics.
The documentary reprised the battle between Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" and Morris's triangulation, culminating in the victory for Morris and Clinton.
It reminded me that it wasn't just the impact of the Morris-Clinton strategy on Brown and Blair that was important. It was also the intensely strong impact of Gingrich's victory on the Conservative Party.
Just at the moment when the Republican's swept the board with a populist small government, right-wing campaign, Major's Conservative Party was floundering, trailing very badly indeed. The lesson seemed obvious. Become more rigorous and more radical, make clear small government promises and you can defeat a third-way politician like Clinton. The Right was convinced. And this led, in time to the Redwood leadership challenge.
But Clinton did not lie down under his 1994 defeat. He moved to the centre and, with Morris, gave real content to his Third Way rhetoric. Within a year he had turned the tables on Gingrich and shown the superiority, in strategic political terms, of his position.
Bush won in 2000 by using a similar triangulation technique.
The Conservative Party continued along the Contract line for years and much of the Right still hankers after it. And Gordon Brown appears to have decided that he can't abandon Blairite triangulation even though many of his supporters wish him to.
The Contract v Dick Morris really was one the defining fights of the era.
Honeymoons are hilarious.
Political honeymoons I mean.
The smallest, often banal, act is portrayed as an example of great statesmanship. Gordon Brown was right to return from his holiday, because the current atmosphere guaranteed that it would be portrayed as strong leadership. But it's hardly the first time a leader has enjoyed such a breathing space.
Here are five great honeymoons:
1. John Major eats chips! The decision of the new Prime Minister to dine in a Happy Eater restaurant was regarded as an indication that here was a man of the people. Within a couple of years the same meal was being satirised on Spitting Image and taken as an indication that the man had no style.
2. David Cameron can ride a bicycle! The miraculous ability of the new Tory leader to travel on a bike without wobbling was seen as an indication that Conservative revival might be possible. Look everyone, no hands. The man can pedal. The Tories are saved.
3. Tony Blair meets Noel Gallagher! It should never be forgotten that there was a period in which Cool Britannia was taken seriously. It was thought, well, cool. And an electoral asset. Now it is impossible to talk about it without people laughing.
4. George Bush is kinder and gentler! When the current President's father talked of a kinder America his popularity soared. He was regarded as so unbeatable that leading Democrats shied away from standing against him - they thought they would get crushed. By the time the election came round it was Bush who was crushed. And part of his problem was that voters thought him a wimp.
5. Bill Clinton delivers his inaugural address! A fresh young President speaks and the nation is ready for something new. But within moments of taking office, the honeymoon is over. The decision, later partially reversed, to allow gays to join the military became public within days of the inaugural and that was it for the Clinton honeymoon. It was regarded as a great political mistake but its effects did not last - he still won in a walk next time, though.
Here's an interesting article. It praises Bill Clinton's appeal to the centre and believes that abandoning Clintonism is a mistake. And it is written by a former senior adviser to the President.
Here's an interesting article
Not that surprising? It is written by a former senior adviser to President... Bush.
The author is Michael Gerson, the man behind some of W's best speeches, a White House loyalist and insider. The key paragraphs are these: The immigration debate is a reminder to the memory-impaired that President Bush ran and won in 2000 as "a different kind of Republican" - meaning the kind that isn't libertarian or nativist. Bush was orthodox on tax cuts and moral values.
But from the earliest days of the nomination contest, he set out policies - a federal role in improving education, humane immigration reform, Medicare prescription drug coverage - that borrowed more from Roman Catholic social thought than from Friedrich Hayek.
Bush's first major policy address of the campaign, which I helped prepare, talked of seeking the "common good," asserted "solidarity" with the poor and declared that "the American government is not the enemy of the American people." Ed Crane of the libertarian Cato Institute complained that the speech epitomized "Bill Clinton's impact on the American polity".
He argues that both Clinton and Bush put forward policies, which were a mix of traditional and original positions, and had at least some positions with a strong centre appeal.
He detects that this is missing so far in the race. I think he is right and that victory will go to the candidate who plugs the gap.
 1. Will Marshall. In 1992, the President of the Progressive Policy Institute was visited by two young British Labour politicians. One of them was Gordon Brown, he forgot the name of the other.
But the impact on Blair of Marshall and his colleagues in the Democratic Leadership Council was greater. Brown and Blair were visiting to get tips from Clinton associates. The PPI was one of the most fruitful sources. Their working papers helped new Labour get started on a new policy agenda - with a Centre Right bent.
The identity of thinking became so great that Marshall now says that the balance of intellectual payments has changed and that the Democrats are drawing from new Labour. Blair became a new Southern Democrat.
 2. Bill Clinton. The election of Clinton profoundly altered Blair and his associates. Philip Gould, Blair's pollster and one of the biggest influences upon him, spent time working on the campaign and absorbed its lessons.
Clinton changed Blair in three ways. First, the Blairites copied Clinton’s "War Room" and began combating the Tories in every news cycle. Second, Tony Blair learned from Clinton's immensely effective rhetorical style. He too began to feel the pain of the middle class. And finally, Clinton's failings hardened Blair. He reacted against the criticism that Clinton avoided hard choices by becoming harder himself. This trait first showed itself during the Kosovo conflict.
 3. Rupert Murdoch. Your estimation of the influence of the proprietor of The Sun and The Times on the Prime Minister depends very much on what you think of Tony Blair. Do you think that his politics are on the Centre Right anyway or do you believe that he moved to the Right simply to win the support of the tabloid press? Perhaps it's a bit more complicated than that. Mr Blair provided his own assessment of the relationship last summer in a speech to a gathering of News Corp executives:
Rupert, it’s great to be back at the News Corp conference after all these years. When I first met you, I wasn’t sure I liked you, but I feared you. Now that my days of fighting elections are over, I don’t actually fear you, but I do like you.
This captures perfectly the way Blair has changed during his period in office - what he may have started out doing through necessity, he ended up doing though conviction.
 4. Dick Morris. When Bill Clinton was choosing his holiday destination, he turned to his pollster for advice. He ended up in Wyoming. The obsessive use of focus group polling became part of Tony Blair's working method too.
In his book, Behind the Oval Office, about his work for Clinton, Morris set out his methods for developing policy. Morris suggests neutralising the Right on their strong issues - crime and the economy - leaving them to fight where they are weak - education, the environment and so on. Blair followed Morris's methods and ideas very closely.
In fact, Behind the Oval Office, written as a memoir of Morris’s time advising Clinton, remains one of the best texts on Blair's political methods.
 5. George W. Bush. The partnership of Bush and Blair, the linking of their names in the public imagination, is an unlikely one. It happened because of Tony Blair's natural liberal interventionism and his view of the importance of the "special relationship". If George Bush had not chosen to invade Iraq, Tony Blair almost certainly would not have advocated doing so. But once the US President had made up his mind to proceed, the British prime minister was never going to allow the Americans to act alone.
Acting together with George Bush has changed Tony Blair in two ways - it has reinforced his interventionist instincts, making that a more prominent part of his political make-up; and it has made him a harder, more ideological politician. He became less reliant on popularity, less concerned about it. And lucky for him that he did, since at the same time he also became a great deal less popular.
Bill Clinton has been telling Hillary's fundraisers that her votes in the Senate should not be interpreted as support for the war.
The Hill was listening in to the conference call and provides this report: In response to a question from one of the supporters on the phone about explaining Hillary Clinton’s Iraq vote to undecided voters, the former president jumped in front of former Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe, saying, “Let me answer this.”
He said he had re-read the Iraq resolution last week, and that his wife had voted only for “coercive inspections.” Clinton justified his wife’s refusal to apologize for her vote by explaining that she was acting out of concern that future presidents might need similar language authorizing “coercive inspections to avoid conflict.”
“It’s just not fair to say that people who voted for the resolution wanted war,” Clinton said.
Wanting war and supporting it are, of course, two different things. But whatever his wife may or may not have voted for, Bill Clinton certainly supported the war. In this article in the Guardian from March 2003 he eloquently explained why.
The position he took in the conference call is, by contrast, shifty and unconvincing.
"The Magic versus the Machine". That is how the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is being characterised. And if this was right, Hillary could neutralise the threat of Obama fairly easily - the Clintons, after all, have magic too.
But the threat from Obama is far more serious than that. The real problem Obama gives Hillary is a threat to her positioning, long the most potent Clinton weapon.
As EJ Dionne writes in the Washington Post, the Clintons rose to power at the head of a movement - a Southern campaign to restore the Democrats to power, by moving the party to the centre. They have only ever been successful while they have maintained this position. Yet Hillary is less associated with it than Bill. She will have to work hard to ensure that she is seen as a new Democrat rather than as a traditional liberal. Unless she does this, she cannot win the general election.
This is why Obama is a threat. He has the black vote for obvious reasons and will court the centre because of his religion and his independent appeal. Hilary may be tempted to court the party faithful by moving to his left.
This would be a disaster for her.
And in case you’re interested, here’s Hillary Clinton launching her presidential bid:
Politicians are liars, right? Wrong. Some are hyprocrites too. The academic David Runciman has written a sharp piece in The London Review of Books about political lies and hypocrisies. His basic thesis is that Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, are political liars par excellence, while their (would-be) successors, Gordon Brown, Al Gore and Peter Costello are political hypocrites. Runciman goes on to argue that voters can warm to liars but not hypocrites. I'll quote him on the Chancellor's vice that: Makes him appear to be someone who is always holding something back, something he would only ever be willing to share among people he really trusts, which emphatically does not include the public at large. It is Brown’s great misfortune that this now appears to be the kind of hypocrite that the public really detests, much more than they hate the liars and adulterers and fools that populate the political scene. What no politician can safely afford is to look as though he is keeping some private truth to himself.
Whereas the bold, pants-on-fire political liars can be regarded by voters as having an essential integrity. He [Blair] is not simply the boldest liar, he is also the best, in that he understands better than anyone the new rules of political fabrication. He comprehensively outmanoeuvred Gordon Brown in Manchester by being truer both to himself and to the spirit of contemporary politics in the way he stretched the truth. Blair was sincere in the lies he told.
and tailoring your personality to win votes can come across as a form of integrity, because it is consistent with being open-minded about everything. In the world of political triangulation, nothing is out of bounds, least of all changing your spots, and people who are willing to change their spots often seem more sincere than those who don’t.
The LRB article is worth reading, especially given that the insults "liar" and "hyprocrite" are chucked at politicians rather too liberally. If voters are going to be rude about their leaders, they ought to be clearer about what they mean by the words they use. But is Runciman really right? Isn't he being harsh in his judgment? And don't we make politicians fib by punishing politicians who tell us hard truths?
PS In the same issue of the LRB John Lanchester coins a neat definition of a blogger as a "diarist with a megaphone".
Robbie Millen
 Bill Clinton wowed the Labour faithful. But one thing he said seemed a bit odd and, as I have heard him say it before, I just thought I would ask if it struck anyone else the same way.
Clinton said that an economy like the UK's and America’s constantly needs to find a fresh source of new jobs. He said that we had done so but the US had not. And then he went on to argue that our new source was our drive towards a greener economy.
Is this right? I thought our new source, accounting for almost the entire growth in employment, was the growth of the public sector.
Daniel Finkelstein
is Comment Editor of The Times and writes a weekly column. Comment Central is his rolling guide to the best opinion on the web. Click
here for more information on the blog. Robbie Millen, the Deputy Comment Editor, will also be posting.
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