Bill Clinton and "Candidate X"

The National Democratic Institute, the taxpayer-financed foreign policy shop for the Democrats, had its regularly scheduled program of former foreign leaders talking about democracy-deliverance infused just now with a jolt of newsmaking when a croaky and dry-mouthed Bill Clinton showed up to give one of his patented off-the-cuff rambles. True to form in '08, Bubba might have stepped in it:

Whether government can actually deliver becomes quite important. It becomes in a way, THE question. Suppose for example you're a voter. And you have Candidate X and Candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don't think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom will you vote?

Whoops! Clinton quickly appended that "this has nothing to do with what's going on now." Uh-huh.

Another interesting Clinton observation, about the culture/political boom:

This campaign will go down in history, our primary campaign, not only because it was a hard-fought and close race between Hillary and Senator Obama, but because of the infusion of cash in small amounts from Internet donors, and because of the explosion of blog sites, and the incredible variety of sources from which people got information, disseminated information, made arguments, and actually conducted, if you will, both virtual and real campaign events. So for those of us who are interested in politics this was an endlessly fascinating process already, and it's still got some twists and turns between now and November.

It sure does!