Yes, and Henry Hyde was going to stand in judgment of the president, and pretend this was about lying under oath, not about sex, when we knew and the American people knew it was really just about sex.

I think there was a fair amount of justice to that point. But I have really tried to keep my eyes on a larger point, which is the more this happens, the more public discourse is degraded. I took as my goal in the 2000 presidential election to be accused of being in the tank to as many presidential candidates as I could. I succeeded in the case of three out of four major candidates I was considered in the tank for George W. Bush, Bill Bradley and John McCain. I wasn't considered in the tank for Al Gore, and I consider that a major failing.

In the book you capture Gore frighteningly well, as having "a genius for subservience," as "a natural number two" but you don't seem to like him.

I think his positions on the environment were terrific. I just wish he'd taken them during the campaign. I wish he hadn't chickened out on gun control during those debates. The point is this: The negative story about a politician is the easiest one to sell an editor these days. When you write something positive about a politician, you're accused of being in the tank for him. All I had to do was point out that Bush talked more about poor people during the campaign than many Democrats, and I was in the tank for him.

I know, I was attacked for giving him credit for his work on education in Texas.

Well, he really cared about that. Would that he cared about a few more things.

So why isn't the media as hard on Bush as on Clinton?

I don't know. If I were writing a column now, I'd have been hitting him on a whole bunch of things. The tax cut: ridiculous. His environmental policies: atrocious. The fact that any day since Sept. 11 he could have gone on the air and asked sacrifice from the American people in terms of energy conservation, and they would have gladly given it to him, but he didn't. In fact, he killed the deal on hybrid vehicles that Clinton and Gore made in Detroit, and then appeared on the White House lawn with hybrid vehicles two weeks after he killed it. He exed out a lot of the funds for education that were in his deal with Ted Kennedy. And if Clinton had gone back on free trade as president, as Bush did with the steel imports, you can imagine what the right wing would have done to him. I respect George Will for going after [Bush] on that issue, but where is the Weekly Standard? Where is the rest of the right?

And what about the Middle East? I was appalled when Ari Fleischer blamed Clinton for the current mess a few weeks back, and even though he recanted, I'm sure that's what this administration thinks.

Well, I kind of agree with Ari on this one, and I'll tell you why. Because a guy who is as good at reading people, the best I ever saw, and getting the deal, willfully did not understand that Yasser Arafat was not going to make the deal.

Willfully did not understand? How can you say that?

Because if he'd stepped back from it, he'd have seen, no matter what Arafat was saying to him, it would never happen. Arafat has defined himself as a revolutionary. At one point, afterward, I said to Clinton: "You know, Arafat has a great life as a revolutionary, he flies to the salons of Europe, the Saudis give him money, he doesn't have to do anything. What made you think he'd wanna give that up?" Clinton said, "I said to him, 'Yasser, if this deal goes through, you're gonna have to buy yourself a desk.'" And if Clinton understood that, why didn't he understand that Arafat would never want to be behind a desk? So I think he should have been far more cautious. He was playing with fire there.

I've been going over there for 25 years, covering wars and peace, and the best five years I ever had were the five years after Oslo. I think the answer there was the appearance, rather than the reality, of a peace process. You give up a town here, a town there, a new generation of kids are growing up, you're giving them an education and allowing businesses to thrive in Gaza and the West Bank. Maybe 15 to 20 years down the road, you have a shot at peace. Maybe you don't, but you didn't have a real shot right then. It just seemed to me he was pushing too hard for a legacy. He humiliated Arafat publicly at the end of the process, and I don't know what's in those documents the Israelis seized in his headquarters, but I wouldn't be surprised if they said that as soon as Sharon gave him an excuse he said, "Start the Intifada."

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