Bill Clinton - how could he have caved to Phil Gramm

Bill Clinton talks to Simon Schama - FT.com: "How do you begin a conversation with the man who knows everything? Steering clear of female literacy rates in Bhutan; the daily amount of clean drinking water available to slum dwellers in Caracas or the rate of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, the sort of thing Bill Clinton recites in his sleep or sings in his shower, I try something less expected. “Do you ever think much about John Quincy Adams?”"

 Bill Clinton has always been facile but has he been smart? He followed the lead of Phil Gramm and threw Glass- Steagall under the bus. He made nuke specs open source. And he failed to draw a reasonable inference about sexual misconduct under a microscope. If I believed that humanitarianism was a substitute for global democratic revolution I might cut him some slack, but for me the jury is still out. Now Obama is smart. Which creates a different set of questions. Bradley Manning heads my list.


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