Never mind the Pollocks as Clinton homes in on that legacy

[emad]

Never mind the Pollocks as Clinton homes in on that legacy
From Gerard Baker in New York



HE CAN’T run for president again. He hasn’t been invited to become Secretary-General of the United Nations. There’s no vacancy for the presidency of the World Bank. So what’s a 50-something former president with a famously insatiable appetite for the glare of the public spotlight and the obscurer minutiae of public policy to do?
The answer has been playing out in New York this week at the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative.

At the Sheraton Hotel in New York, a few blocks from Times Square, on a stage fitted out like a late-night television arts review set, Bill Clinton has been doing what he loves best: hosting famous and powerful people at a colloquium on the world's great challenges.

For two days, familiar figures from politics, the corporate world, non-governmental organisations and, of course, show business, have been chewing the Clintonian cud on four grand questions: global poverty; religion and conflict; climate change, and governance.

The participants have included Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Shimon Peres and Barbra Streisand. They have ruminated on the prospects for peace in the Middle East, saving the planet from global warming and alleviating disease in Africa.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1784318,00.html

[emad]

1. There's always NATO Sec Gen's job in the offing.....

Otherwise NASA could do with some one to push it into the 21st century...

[Mass]

2. for some reasons, this initiative lets me cold

To me, this looks more like a way for Clinton to have powerful people meeting around him than like something that could be useful to people and it revolves way too much about the notion of big business.

I can't remember when Carter started Habitat for Humanity. Did he do something that happen or was the launching of Habitat already turned to direct and real action to help people.

[Totally Committed]

3. The last paragraph:

"And yet it is still hard to resist the conclusion that, not wholly unintentionally, the two principal beneficiaries will be the reputation of the former president, at last freed from the shackles of scandal, and the presidential prospects of his smiling spouse, dispensing bonhomie among the crowd but whose mind was surely set on securing a whole different set of commitments."

I continue my reiteration that having an ex-POTUS as a spouse is an unfair advantage for a Presidential candidate. Every time Bill does or says anything, he gets press (and she benefits from that). Every time his wisdom and eloquence speaks to an issue, she is seen to share his wisdom and eloquence on that issue. Every time he speaks of her, he is speaking of her candidacy, in one way or another. When he holds a high-powered event, she is always present. She is seen to share his global "contacts". And, it is assumed that he endorses her for that office. (There is a reason why former Presidents do not endorse Presidential candidates... it is seen as and over-powering advantage. His not openly "endorsing" her, however, will be assumed a mere technicality. She enjoys that endorsement without him even needing to speak the words.)

At this point, I only protest. She has not formally announced. But, if this undue influence continues once she does, I am prepared to raise as big a ruckus as one person can about it. It is simply UNFAIR.

TC

[Mass]

4. I agree.

The idea that she would be a speaker concerning Global Climate Change (an issue where she is not even really engaged in ) is just ludicrous. Why did they not invite Gore to speak. At least, it would be justified.

[Totally Committed]

5. For that matter...

Why not Robert Kennedy, Jr.?

TC

[Totally Committed]

6. Tried to edit this to add the following, but time had run out:

as a disclaimer, Mass and I, though simpatico on may things, do not support the same candidate. So, there is no element here of "ganging up" going on.

Just wanted to say that for the record.

TC