The Art of Politics

Richard Clarke's American Grandstand

All the world's a stage, and Clarke insists on his 15 minutes on it...

There is always something just a little unseemly about tell-all books - they portray an image always contrary to the public view of the subject (nobody buys a book affirming what is already thought to be common knowledge), and at the end, the reader usually is left with the invariable question of association. How can you justify being around that which you now proclaim to hold in contempt?

Richard Clarke seems no exception... his political shiv job on the Bush administration, like O'Neill's, comes across as a tantrum of a fair-haired child now out of favor. When his face time with the most powerful man on the earth went away, he seemed disinclined to continue to cast his pearls before swine. From the ingratiating nature of his opening remarks to the 9/11 commission, to his prismatic examination of the past, Clarke's argument seems to be his only failing is his inability to convince others of his certitude to the extent that he has clearly convinced himself.

Let's be clear - the blame for 9/11 rests solely and irrevocably on the shoulders of 19 dead extremist murderers and their cohorts and directors in Al Qaeda. Yet peering out of his testimony and any discussion of his book is the pink elephant in the room - how can one stand in harsh critique of the administration that has numerous accomplishments in actual terror policy, but attempt to divorce oneself from any role in the feckless non-response over a decade of terrorist attacks that led up to 9/11?

Relative obscurity and being odd-man out in the new Homeland Security Department were too small a box for a self-importance as large as Clarke's.

Posted by MEC2 at March 25, 2004 08:24 PM | TrackBack