TURNS out that former President Bill Clinton is one of those who thinks the terrorists are somehow suffering from economic deprivation – even if Osama bin Laden is a Saudi gazillionaire.
Clinton the other night said fighting global poverty is one way to stop terror. “We should reduce the pool of potential terrorists by showing people that we will not claim for ourselves what we would deny to them,” he said at a speech-for-pay in Washington.
Clinton also claimed bin Laden and his henchmen “are good, they are uncompromising” – obviously meaning he thinks they’re smart, but it’s impossible to imagine President Bush using such language. Bush calls them “evil.”
And in an odd riff on religious warfare in the Mideast across the ages, Clinton said the formation of the state of Israel meant that “the Jews came back and the Muslims, the Palestinians were run out.”
This is, to put it mildly, not how friends of Israel describe its founding.
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Bush’s stern side showed when he lectured Congress “loud and clear” about leaks. But he’s also showing his softer, kidding side as he tries to keep the nation on an even keel.
Even as he lectured, Bush all but winked as he admitted there would be some “heartburn” in Congress. Yesterday, he kidded NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson that he really ought to be a Texan.
When the airlines were just starting to fly again, he joked to worried airline workers in Chicago about how their mayor was buying lunch and “I like my cheeseburger medium.”
When Liza Minnelli came to the White House on Monday to sing “New York, New York” on Columbus Day, Bush also welcomed the family of Fire Chief of Department Tom Ganci, who gave his life at the Twin Towers.
But then he joked about how one of Ganci’s sons said he only wished his hero dad was there because he could whack a golf ball all the way over the South Lawn fence at the White House.
“I said, ‘It might make him nervous. He might shank it into the water,’ ” Bush recounted to laughter. “He said, ‘No, you don’t know my dad.’ “
Presidential scholar Charles Jones said those little personal touches are critical and very reassuring to a jittery nation right now because they convey a sense that Bush is “genuine” and can be trusted.
“It conveys the forthrightness of leadership, but on the other hand, he’s not afar, not distant,” Jones said. “Those little asides and twinkles are reassuring that this is not a general but a real person.”
The quips and smiles also show that Bush is “comfortable in his own skin” even amid a nightmare crisis, and that, too, is reassuring, said analyst Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution.