Friday, September 22, 2006

Keith Olbermann gets Clinton to give Bush some advice. Disappointingly the advice is not "throw yourself off of a bridge".

OLBERMANN: Let me throw the craziest, unrealistic political hypothetical to you in our current environment. The phone rings tomorrow and it’s the current president, and he says things aren’t go as well as they might, either for me or the country. I need a piece of advice, and I’m asking you sincerely for it, for one thing that I can do tomorrow that will improve things. You’re the genie now in the political realm again, as you were in this building these last three days. What would you say to him if that request came through?

CLINTON: I would say that—I would give him, actually, two pieces of advice. I would say, first of all, I think if you can find some way, consistent with our commitment to Israel’s security, to resume the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and move fairly quickly to a Palestinian state, I think that would do more to change the image of the United States and—than anything else.
I think there’s so many Arab-Muslim countries that are frightened by this instability and all this violence, and I think you would find that Israel would actually get more credit and a more positive response from other Arab nations by doing this than ever before. And I think we would have a chance them to stabilize a lot of other problems in the Middle East. That’s the first thing.
The second thing I’d say is no American president can possibly please people all over the world all the time. If you have an unusual political, military and economic position, you’re always going to do things that some people won’t like.

But there are two things that are important. You should look like we prefer cooperation over unilateralism and act alone only when we feel we have to. And you should let people know that we have no anger or animosity and we wish them the best.

We need more sound advice to come from Bill Clinton. Maybe if he says this often enough somebody might listen to him. Somebody, like perhaps the current occupant of the White House who needs all of the help he can possibly get.

I watched this episode of Countdown and thought it was clear that Clinton was not only familiar with Keith but also that he agreed with much of what he has said on his "special comments" sections. As evidenced by this exchange:

CLINTON: No, let me say, first of all, you know, on a lot of these issues I’m more close to where you are.

He's a fan!


1 comment:

  1. Anonymous2:03 AM

    Isn't it great how ex-crappy presidents get to be "respected statesmen"? I can't wait to see the photo (after a disaster)
    of Carter, Bush, Clinton and Bush, coming together to "unite" America. Actually, I just can't wait to see any photo of Bush (W) as an "ex".

    ReplyDelete

Don't feed the trolls!
It just goes directly to their thighs.