Bill Clinton looks like a goddamn fool

Bill Clinton just looks foolish, right now.

Bill Clinton paints Obama as 'establishment' candidate

What kind of desperate and dishonest argument is this? Now I see why Republicans hated this guy.

I used to find this stuff cute in debate. When people would argue every position from every angle, no matter how ridiculous, as a matter of getting the win.

But it's dishonest in real life. And it reeks of the central thing that drove me crazy about speech and debate: people more concerned about winning than about being more thoughtful and, in policy speeches, adopting better policy.

I hated it. It was what motivated me to want to study policy, in the first place. I wanted to be a part of more honest conversations about politics which is constantly muddled, distorted, and undermined by the persistent dishonest positioning for a win. I hated it about speech and debate and I hate it about politics. It drives me up a wall. And too many people, just like Bill Clinton, persistently act like it doesn't matter, in the least, no matter how much policies fail and self-centered politics like this is, by my lights, the largest contributor to the neverending, fruitless, futile, and foolish defenses of failed policies.

How refreshing it would be to have honest policy discussions that didn't involve defending the failures as well as acknowledging the successes of the Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt, Hoover, Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, Taft, Roosevelt, McKinley, or any other administration. Wouldn't it be nice to have honest, empirical, thoughtful discussions about policy that weren't centered around defending the flaws and failures of our favorite presidents rather than just being open, ready, and willing to acknowledge whatever failures of policy of whatever President, Congress, Supreme Court, political party, ideology, or whatever ever individual or group that might have been responsible for failures in the past?

Those discussions happen more regularly, though far from ideally, in scholarly policy, economics, history, and other social science circles. And that is why I prefer them. That and the fact that the participants are generally more sober, honest, knowledgeable, and seriously responsible for the world and the cultural, economic, social, and policy events, failures and successes that occur within it.

When we favor particular candidates and Presidents, we are more want to overlook those failures and flaws. God knows I was more willing to do so when Bill Clinton was playing on the team I rooted for. But it's grating in the extreme to watch him throw bullshit arguments at the wall just to see what sticks and act like the bullshit really has no consequence in discussion and the level of faith or not that people have in the political process.

If there is one thing I would most want to see in my lifetime more than any other it would be an honest and sober discussion of policy matters in formal political circles and not just in the universities and the marketplace of ideas around those circles.

If you have a self-righteous political identification and you think what matters is your side wins, then you probably won't be interested in those kinds of discussions. Then again, that really is the problem.

But I care enough about that process to expect something more honest than Bill Clinton's remarks yesterday.

Otherwise, who really cares?