112. Bill Clinton: Putin, Palestine, and Trump

0:28Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. Sign up to The Rest is Politics. is made to fit your life and your windows. Because at Blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you. Visit Blinds.com now for up to 40 % off select styles, plus a professional measure at no cost. Rules and restrictions apply.

0:49How is my favorite former president? I'm doing great. It's a lousy weather, and I just got back from several days in Arkansas celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Presidential Center. So I lost a lot of my voice down there. But it's coming back, I think. You can hear me all right. Yeah, we can hear you fine. That's Rory, you can see there. Rory is my partner in crime on this podcast. Hi, Rory. If you're okay, we're just going to go straight in. Is that okay? Yep. Fantastic. Here we go. So with us today, none other than Bill Clinton, one of a relatively small group of people, all men alas, as Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris know to their cost, who spent eight years being described as the most powerful person in the world.

1:32Working class kid, Arkansas governor in his 30s, president in his 40s, a role he stopped aged 54. So he's had almost a quarter of a century to adapt to the often very strange existence that is post-power politics and public life. And his account of those years, Citizen, My Life After the White House, shows that he's been busy. and these times have been dramatic and emotional, not least because of the political ups and downs of Hillary and also the ups and downs and the big issues he addressed in power like the Middle East, relations with Russia and China, Ireland, climate and of course the state of politics.

2:12So welcome and thank you and can I start with this, how on earth have we gone from the politics that made me at least feel pretty glad to be alive and involved when you were in power to the politics we've got now with populism on the march and Trump on his way back to the White House. What has gone wrong? Well, I think several things have gone wrong and we're sort of responsible for not winning when I think we should. But it's important for our friends in the UK and throughout Europe to remember that since I was elected and then reelected, we have only lost the popular vote in America twice. Once when George Bush was given the narrowest re-election margin since Woodrow Wilson, just before World War I.

2:58And once in this most recent election, when we had to run with an enormous number of problems and we lost by a minute and a half or a minute and six votes, less than Hillary beat Donald Trump by in 2016. So it's not great, but it's not the end of the world. But there is a war going on in America now, essentially to try to dismantle the politics of inclusive tribalism. That is, a politics that treats diversity as an asset. And no one can repeal it, but the idea is to make people around the edges feel that identity is a zero-sum game, not a positive-sum game. And I think a lot of it is the extreme income inequality that we've seen in America, beginning with a financial crash in 2008.

3:50Things were getting very tough. And as you saw in the UK, the left moved left, basically saying the government can fix all this. And a lot of this is about culture, how we treat each other, how we live together, what we hold on to and what we give up. And it's highly complicated, but mostly it's about the sense that life is being constantly upended, and a lot of people want to hold on to at least what they've got and to do better without giving up social conventions and arrangements that they believe in. So people ask me all the time, is this about identity or economics? And the answer is both.

4:29Mr. President, what's the path now if you wanted to rebuild an energetic, progressive center? Because it feels pretty gloomy. It feels gloomy in the US and it feels pretty gloomy in Europe because the populists are taking elections again and again now. First of all, our tasks may be somewhat less complex than they are in the UK or in Europe where you have multi-party systems. And on the other hand, you don't have an electoral college. So if you can put together a coalition of people who are more like you than like the right, you can still win there with coalition politics, but it means they tend to be fragile all along the way.

5:09If we win here, at least we get four years in the White House and we get a couple of midterm elections to fight about. So the politics are different. But I think that there was a period when the center-left was afflicted with two wrongheaded notions. One was that we were somehow in a demographic majority in America because we have so much racial, ethnic, and religious diversity, and that people would vote predictably based on their education levels and their past and all of that. And that's only partly true. So the Republicans in America always attack us where we're strong, and they always believe they can peel off enough people, and their base, while smaller, is harder core.

5:55So that's one problem. The other problem is that if politics seems irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people, they may not vote. And the people on the populist right, they always vote, or at least typically they vote in larger numbers in America than the alternative. And that's basically what happened in this last election. If you look at it, we did lose some ground, but we lost more ground among people who didn't vote at all than we did on people switching sides. You quote in the book, somebody that Rory and I talk about a lot on the podcast, which is Moises Naim and his three Ps, populism, polarization, and post-truth.

6:34And you've got your own kind of version of that. You talk about your three Ds, which are divide, demonize, and dominate. And you also talk, I don't think you mean this flatteringly, but you've got this sentence. Let me just read this. Trump was a genius at turning legitimate concerns into rage-fueled resentment by convincing deeply alienated people he had mastered a system they hated and would change it to benefit the working class. Now, I get why he's able to do that. A kind of more challenging question is, why has the progressive side of politics enabled him to do that? Well, I think we got used to winning elections and we forgot that every one of them had to be hard fought and that it wasn't just some sort of automatic thing.

7:21I think in the United States, at least, I think we have overestimated the influence of pollsters and political consultants and underestimated the importance of connections, maintaining connections with voters. That's why I think there is very little concern that Trump seems to be appointing people of, shall we say, limited experience and highly targeted toward his message. I think it's because people have lost faith in establishments everywhere. And this is true, I believe, in Europe. And there's just been so much upheaval. So let's look at the European project. What was a project that seemed to offer the opportunity for people to move across borders, to live in other countries, to work together, to slowly meld their political system, became, as a result of the political and economic crises of the last 20 years, a deeply threatening thing to many people.

8:18So that the last thing they wanted was people who were highly experienced in the past. It was almost as if having been successful in one system and made you ineligible for election in the new world that they think needs to be forged. And people are what seems to be or was once disabling behavior is no longer such a problem because people are more worried about the world they knew crumbling around them without some certainty of where they're going to be in the new world. And I think that is a recipe for what I would call negative populism. That is, you may not win in this new deal, but at least they'll lose.

8:59Mr. President, there's a weird thing, which is that the president in 1992, the president in 1996, the president in 2000, the president in 2004, the president in 2016, and the president in 2024 were all born in 1946. I wondered whether you can reflect a little about what it is about your generation. What was it like being born in 1946? What determined your worldview? And why did we end up in a world so dominated? You know, I can throw in around that period, Newt Gingrich, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, Al Gore, John Kerry. I mean, what's going on? What's with 1946 or the 40s in general? Well, it was the first full year after World War II, and we were beginning to try to build a world that would be more peaceful, we hoped.

9:45But also, we had to face forces that made it more difficult to build broad-based unity. So for example, we had the United Nations and then we had to figure out what that was and what its mission would be and how it would affect us. And then we had the rise of the Soviet Union and then the rise of China. And then all that came afterward, Africa beginning to get appropriate notice and becoming stronger, India becoming significant economic force in the world. And I just think over time, we're all playing catch-up hoping we can recover the sense of purpose, direction, and energy that animated our countries ever so briefly during the Second World War.

10:27So we've had to basically build a new plane to take us to the future. And the odd thing about it is that normally you imagine that a generation has similar views, but there we are in the summer of 1946. We have the birth of President Clinton, President Bush, and President Trump. Three people with very, very different views of the world. Any thoughts on how three people born within three months of each other in the same country end up with completely different visions of what the world should be like? We had different parents, we had different circumstances, and we were taught by different people.

11:04The distance turned out not to be so great once someone else showed up who had a much more radical view. George Bush and I, we used to joke we didn't think we agreed on anything, and then it turned out we did. And then Donald Trump had a different one again. He was the son of a New York real estate developer, and his major political advisor as a young man was Roy Cohn, who was Senator Joseph McCarthy's eminence grise until McCarthy had to leave the Congress. And Eisenhower and the more moderate Republicans finally found a way to undo him with a little help from himself. And then Cohn came back to New York.

11:42But he had a ferocious belief that you should always try to win by denying everything that's inconvenient and attacking your opponent and accusing them of doing what you're doing. And that's work. But that gives you a whole different world to live and function in. I should tell you, my favorite date of birth thing is that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day. We don't need to get into that. But there's one particular issue I want to get you on, and that's the Middle East. One of the high points of your presidency must have been the steps forward that you took in the Middle East peace process.

12:18You seem to be able to bring people together. But there's this really standout line towards the end of your book. I get the sense you felt really badly let down by Yasser Arafat. You said Arab states had largely abandoned the Palestinians after Arafat squandered the best chance for peace in a generation. Just talk us through what was going on there, why you feel so strongly that that was such a kind of bad moment in the Middle East peace process. Well, I feel that way for two reasons. First of all, I had extraordinary leaders to work with, and I would include Arafat. Arafat was a positive force for many years.

12:55But Rabin, along with Tony Blair and Nelson Mandela, Helmut Kohl was the person I felt closest to in international politics. He was an extraordinary man. And as we all know, he was willing to give his life to get a state for the Palestinians and a long-term peace and stability. It cost him his life. And then it cost Yehud Barak, who was the most decorated soldier in the history of the Israeli Defense Force. It cost him and his party not just an election when Arafat turned the deal down, but also arguably their existence as a viable political force. So, yeah, I was upset about it. Look, it was all worth doing in the four years after I left office.

13:38And President Bush, to be fair to him, tried to come up with a new idea. But in those four years, three times as many young Israelis and three times as many young Palestinians were killed in acts of political violence as in the previous eight years. So when we were working it and working with the Palestinians, we could make progress. But, you know, now that's a long time. And I understand like you had young Muslims in America voting against President Biden because we helped Israel with military weapons. And they had no idea what the strategic implications were that the Iranians and Hezbollah and the Houthis had switched to helping Gaza.

14:21They had no idea what they had turned down. You know, I talked to all these groups all the time. I said, you understand, the deal was for 96 % of the West Bank to go to a Palestinian state and 4 % of Israel, either in the north to alleviate population congestion or in the west for agriculture. Nobody knows that. And so you've got Hamas then later taking over Gaza and then never having another election. And that ought to tell you something. They never had another, never allowed another election in Gaza. So now somebody asked me the other day, well, this is great, but where are the Palestinians going to get their state?

15:00And basically, all the trust, all the work, everything was slowly destroyed. And I still believe that the best outcome is close as we can get to the deal we pulled together. I mean, where's the land going to come from? So it was truly heartbreaking. And the only thing that I was really mad at Arafat about is I went to Gaza. I addressed the Palestinian parliament. We were working together after Camp David. He came down to see me in the OAL office, just the two of us. And I said, you know, I can go to North Korea and end their nuclear and missile programs. And our friends in North Asia would have a much better run in the future if we could do that.

15:38But if I do it, I'll have to be gone 12 days. And this was when I had like six weeks left in office. And it's the only time Erafat ever cried. He said, oh, you can't do that. I said, I can't do it because you're going to take the peace deal. Have it look like I made you do it? And he laughed. He said, sure. And I said, OK, but you owe it to me to tell me the truth. I said, do you think I care about your kids? He said, oh, far more than the Arabs do. He said, you know, they just need us to be victims when they want to make the United States or the EU look bad. So anyway, that was a conversation.

16:11You stayed so as you could look the part and then he kind of let you down. But it's not me. It was anybody seriously think that the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank are better off today than they would have been if they'd taken this deal. So there's something more to it. I know there is, and I don't know what it is, but I do think it has to be part of the embedded mirror. And a lot of people say, well, that doesn't justify what the far right wing Israeli government is. I agree with that. But if you walk away from a deal like that, where there's the body of an Israeli prime minister who literally risked his life and gave it, and then the wreckage of the Labor Party in Israel because they stayed with the peace process.

16:53If you walk away from a deal like that, you can't come back in 20 years and say, well, okay, now we want it, or nothing was supposed to change. You can't do that. Something's going to happen. Just like things have happened in America, things have happened in the UK. things happen. What's happened over the generations since then has been a massive expansion of Israeli settlements. We now have 800 ,000 Israelis living in occupied Palestinian territory. We have a Gaza war where 50 ,000 people have been killed, which seems to have no sign of stopping. It's not clear to me at all why Netanyahu is still conducting this war at all.

17:32Can you reflect a little bit about this? He wants to stay for life too, maybe just to keep the legal dogs at bay, but he's in a position now where with the narrowest of coalitions and two extreme right-wing territorialist extremists in his cabinet, he can hold on because no one else can put together a government to dislodge him when the number one thing they want now is somebody who will fight. One of the things that Hamas did is to give Bibi a new lease on life. And if in the month or so after October 7th, there could have been a referendum in Israel, I don't think he could have won it, because they clearly weren't prepared for this.

18:11And a lot of people in the kibbutzim border in Gaza were telling the Israeli government all along that something's going on here. They seem to be practicing. Things are happening. I think that it's something of a miracle, but he just kept fighting. And keep in mind, unlike the Labor Party, Prime Minister Netanyahu's Likud party always opposed a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. Gaza, they were really against anything that affected Judea and Samaria, the biblical Judea and Samaria. And Prime Minister Netanyahu's father, who just passed away at 107, was basically the wunderkind of the Likud party working for Jabotinsky, its founder, and in opposition to David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres at the beginning.

19:01This stuff has a long history, but you've got to give it to them. That's one thing they have been consistent about from the beginning. After Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated and the family of the young men who did it were part of one of those extreme settlers groups, Prime Minister Netanyahu did have to work with us on some things, and we made a few agreements. But it was by far the worst political tragedy that, in my opinion, during my eight years. Okay, honest with you, Mr. President. Quick break. We'll come back for more. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

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19:59Some of the most powerful parts of your new book, Citizen, some of the bits that I found quite a tough read at times was actually when you're writing about Hillary and you're writing about Hillary's political career and in particular the presidential campaign. And I get the feeling that, I mean, you're somebody who always tries to see the sunny side of life. But that feels to me like it produced a visceral anger in you. I just want to know whether you're through the anger and over that anger, or whether you think you're going to take that with you to the grave. No, I don't want to take it to the grave, but I was angry, not so much at Donald Trump.

20:36He was who he is. And he was entitled to run and say whatever he wanted. But it was amazing to me how the establishment political press didn't see him for the significant force that he would turn out to be. I mean, I remember the first time I saw him with 20 or so other Republicans on a stage in Florida in 2000, either late 14 or early 15. And I told some people who were sitting there with us, I said, this guy has got an excellent chance to win the primary. And they thought I was Looney Tunes. And I said, you just don't have any idea what it's like living in the parts of America where people feel there's been insufficient economic opportunity and a loss of social status and political standing.

21:21I said, you know, you just don't understand how people think out there. He does. He understands that. And somehow he became credible as their destroyer, if you will. I think probably because of the years he spent on that show, The Apprentice, firing people and knowing how they felt. And they watched him grind people down. And he said, look, I know this. I made a lot of money in the system that we have, and I know how to turn it to your benefit. It was a very clever way to say it. You mentioned the press there, and there's a lot of stuff in your book about the way that they framed Trump, the way they covered Hillary, her emails getting 20 times more coverage than any other kind of issue within the whole debate and so forth.

22:02But then you come out really, really strong at one point in the book where you basically say, Putin's enablers, you say, were James Comey and the political press. And again, I sense your anger in that. Just talk them through one by one. Putin, his role in the first Trump victory, and then James Comey, and why you feel that was such a kind of bad thing that he did. First of all, Putin may have, I say may, because the data's harder to retrieve and calculate there. But it may be that he turned a relatively narrow electoral victory into an electoral college loss, because the Russians are very good at this.

22:41And Trump kept saying indignantly, there was no collusion. Well, they gave him data and other stuff, but there didn't have to be back then because back then, the Russians were better than the American right at managing this campaign online. So it was just simple. And he didn't like Obama. Hillary was the Secretary of State and had to play the mad guy role from time to time. And he knew, as he said in Helsinki, in front of Donald Trump, they had a press conference together. And he said, yes, I did everything I could to help him because I thought it was better for Russia. And I agree with him. It was better for Russia to have Trump there than have Hillary there.

23:22So that's that. Now, on Comey, we have very good data. And I wrote about this so much, partly because the mainstream political media was in some financial distress. They have to make money. They get more money out of clicks and retweets online, and negative stuff sells more. But Donald Trump's State Department admitted that Hillary neither sent nor received a single solitary email marked confidential on her personal devices. And the rules under which a secretary of state was permitted to use personal emails were clear. They could do it because they traveled a lot and they were doing 50 different things and talking to people all over the world all the time.

24:08But they had to save any work-related emails and turn them over when they were asked. She followed the rules. And yet for more than a year, the press tried to give people the impression that somehow what she was doing was shady. And then when John Kerry did the same thing until the rules were changed, they said, oh, he sometimes did that. And if you looked at all the explanations, they went out of their way not to tell the American people that she had followed the rules to the T, that there never was a single one. And they gave this more coverage than anything else. Why? Because they wanted a coach race.

24:46They thought she couldn't lose. And as a result of that and time passing, she was nowhere near the same person to the voters in 2016 that she had been in 2008 when she and President Obama were running against each other. When the voters really liked her and she would have walked in her, she'd won the nomination. So the only thing that I was angry about, I wasn't so mad at Trump. You can't blame a guy. If somebody drives up in front of your office today with the most elaborate Rolls Royce or Bentley that you produce over there and lets you have it for a few weeks, nobody can blame you for going around the park in it.

25:23So I didn't blame Trump. But if you pretend to be the referee in any kind of athletic match, you can't wear the uniform of the other team. You have to actually try to be a referee and tell the truth. And they didn't. And you can say, how can I say that with such confidence? Because we were, by the time James Comey reopened his email investigation, knowing that there was a better than 99 % chance that there was nothing to it, knowing that the Republican committee was phony. We knew that. And there was a 70-year-old rule that said the FBI did not interfere with an election within two months of the election day if they weren't going to indict somebody.

26:06He broke that rule knowing that there was absolutely as close to zero as you could get chance that there was anything wrong. He did it because I think he was delusional about his power and wisdom, and I think he also was afraid of the Republican right and not afraid of the White House and others. But we do know that. She dropped overnight five to six points in the polls. I've never seen that happen before or since. And then she got, you know, give or take about half of it back, except in the swing states where she lost by four and a half points. That would have given her Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, which she only lost by 1.2 points.

26:49And Nate Silver, who used to be the darling of the political media, said that you have to turn yourself into a pretzel to think that Comey didn't cost you the election. and he had to post that article and his analysis on an extended tweet to text it because none of the newspapers wanted his article. So, you know, yeah, they should own that. When you work as hard as they did for something, you ought to take pride in achieving it, not deny it. Mr. President, you mentioned amongst one of the three things, Putin. And of course, Putin came into office right towards the end of your presidency, but you met him.