Citizen Clinton Up Close

Overseas, Clinton still has his fingers in foreign policy. While in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, for a February speech, he met for more than three hours with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to discuss what is now known as the Saudi plan to restart the peace process (before The New York Times's Tom Friedman did). Privately dissed for months by the White House for his failed Mideast peace efforts in 2000, Clinton's extraordinary knowledge of the region and commitment to keeping the parties talking is suddenly looking good. The ex-president praises envoy Anthony Zinni, and he's not agitating for a formal diplomatic role, but he joked privately late last year that Bush "could just send me and George [Mitchell] over there, and when it fails, he can blame us!"

That's unlikely, but the White House may be starting to realize he's a tremendous resource in other regions, too. In the meantime, he works his buddy list of heads of state and "formers," staying in close touch with friends like British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Nelson Mandela, whom he credits with helping him move past old recriminations. He has declined to criticize Bush on domestic policy and stayed strongly supportive of the war against terrorism, usually sticking to the informal speak-no-evil rules of the ex-presidents' club.

But for the first time Clinton is now willing to disagree publicly with Bush's policy toward North Korea. "We ended their nuclear program in '94, and we nearly came to blows. It was about as close as we came to all-out war when I was president," Clinton says. "We kept it quiet because I didn't want to scare anybody. But I knew I couldn't afford to let North Korea develop nuclear weapons." Now, he says, Bush must reverse course and resume talks with North Korea to end its missile program, as favored by South Korean President Kim Dae Jong. But Clinton still stops short of criticizing Bush's "axis of evil" speech.

Even now, every day's newspaper seems to bring a reminder that Clinton's past has not passed. Bush repudiated comments by his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, blaming the violence in the Mideast on Clinton's pushing too hard at Camp David (which Clinton terms "laughable"). But the president said nothing when Vice President Cheney, at a GOP fund-raiser last month, quoted favorably from a column by former Clinton aide Dick Morris in The Wall Street Journal claiming Clinton didn't care about terrorism. Some members of Congress still echo Bush's 2000 Campaign charge that Clinton "hollowed out" today's military--the same military (built and trained in the Clinton years) that has performed so well in the war against terrorism. All are reminders of how handy Clinton remains as a punching bag.

While Clinton is usually factually correct in refuting these arguments, he can't help sounding defensive and self-absorbed. And he's hardly about to join the reigning Washington consensus, even among many Democrats, which is that if Clinton's skillful stewardship to a post-industrial economy was right for the 1990s, Bush's unadorned moral clarity worked better after September 11.

Clinton's policy fluency--and unmatched ability to explain a complex world--are already missed in some quarters. But he still must confront the perception that he's a little "September 10th." Not a relic; too young and forward-thinking for that, but less relevant than he once seemed. He's at historical risk of being remembered as a gaudy flower--or tiresome weed--obscured between the Bushes, a prewar luxury of tabloid distraction.