Glass Houses: Why The GOP's "Let's Blame Clinton For 9/11" Strategy Is Failing

This was good for a few laughs:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice challenged former President Bill Clinton's claim that he did more than many of his conservative critics to pursue al Qaeda, saying in an interview published Tuesday that the Bush administration aggressively pursued the group even before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.

The newspaper published her comments after Mr. Clinton appeared on "Fox News Sunday" in a combative interview in which he defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and said he "worked hard" to have the al Qaeda leader killed.

"That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Mr. Clinton said in the interview. "They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try."

Rice disputed his assessment.

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," she said.

Rice also took exception to Mr. Clinton's statement that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for incoming officials when he left office.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the same company that owns Fox News Channel.

In the interview, Mr. Clinton accused host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job" and asked: "I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, 'Why didn't you do anything about the Cole?' I want to know how many people you asked, 'Why did you fire Dick Clarke?"'

Rice portrayed the departure of former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke differently, saying he "left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security."

The reference to the Cole related to the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

The interview has been the focus of much attention, drawing nearly 1.2 million views on YouTube and earning the show its best ratings in nearly three years.

Rice questioned the value of the dialogue.

"I think this is not a very fruitful discussion," she said. "We've been through it. The 9/11 commission has turned over every rock and we know exactly what they said."

Yeah, no shit it's not a very fruitful discussion, Condi. You and your extremist buddies should have figured that out prior to launching your "let's blame Clinton for 9-11" strategy. I guess you thought it would be a good campaign issue for the run-up to the 2006 mid-term elections. But you neglected to take into account that you and the rest of the Bush Regime did nothing with regard to al Qaeda in the eight months you were in office prior to 9-11.

I'm glad Bill Clinton finally decided to go on the attack on this particular issue. As Arianna notes, it's about freaking time:

After providing President Bush cover for his disastrous handling of Katrina, after trying to get himself adopted by George Bush, Sr., after giving Laura Bush the keynote slot at his Global Initiative Conference, after going along with Rupert Murdoch's fundraiser for Hillary -- after all that, he got exactly nothing.

All of Bill Clinton's tireless "bipartisanship" has been of no benefit to him, of no benefit to the country, and has only benefited George Bush and the right-wing.

I'm glad the Chris Wallace interview is flying all over the internet, but I really hope that one person who will watch it over and over again is Bill Clinton. And that on the fifth or sixth viewing it might occur to him that the more cover he gives Bush and his cronies, the more they're able to increase and entrench their power. Power they use to destroy everything that Clinton purports to stand for.

The GOP started this fight when they got their surrogate to do that bullshit 9-11 mini-series on ABC (which "coincidently" aired just a couple months before the elections) then continued the coordinated attack when they tried to go after Bill Clinton by getting Chris Wallace on FauxNews to attempt to ambush him. What a mistake. I'm glad they did it, though, because -- as Arianna noted -- it finally got Clinton to start acting like a Democrat again instead of a watered-down, diplomatic ex-president who got along great with the Bushes.

All the Wallace interview did was remind everyone just how smart Bill Clinton is and how good a president he really was compared to the moron we have in there now. They've now turned the pre-9/11 approach to bin Laden into a mid-term campaign issue when all they had to do was keep their mouths shut on this and it never would have come up. After all, this stuff really is old news -- it's a five-year-old story, for God's Sake -- and the record clearly shows that BushCo dropped the ball on the whole al Qaeda deal in the run-up to 9/11.

I think the GOP strategy relied on the ABC mini-series convincing everyone that Clinton was to blame for 9-11, but the blogosphere did a great job of putting pressure on ABC to take out all the false parts of the show, which watered it down big time as a GOP hit piece. Indeed, all the controversy actually worked to educate the public somewhat on the extent to which Clinton really did go after bin Laden.

Was it Karl Rove's idea to bring up the whole pre-9/11 deal as a campaign issue? If so, it was a monumental screw up in my opinion. Once again, its success relied on the stupidity of the American people, who -- unfortunately for the GOP -- seem to be a bit smarter these days.

I'm sure Rove's idea was to shore up the GOP's base in an attempt to make some of these mid-term election results close enough so that GOP operatives could steal them, but independents are going to be a big factor in the mid-terms and, as this poll indicates (thanks for the link, Slick), independents clearly feel that Bush bears more responsibility for 9/11 than does Clinton. Indeed, a lot of Republicans also feel the same way -- only 71% of Republicans think Clinton is more to blame for 9/11 -- which does not bode well for GOP candidates this year.