Hypocrisy–That’s Why We Miss Good Ol’ Bill

So I see the annual Clinton International Chick-Pickup Forum Clinton Global Initiative opened today in New York, and Clinton dispelled much of the nostalgia some conservatives were having for a tax-cutting, budget-balancing, free-trading (all under GOP duress, I understand) Democratic president, who compares very favorably to the one we’ve got now.  We’ve all forgotten what a first class hypocrite he is.  Clinton went off on Republicans on climate change, and said the only thing holding back green energy was—wait for ita lack of money!  Sure, and with enough money I could buy myself an NBA-quality jump shot?

Clinton is no doubt counting on the fact that his own record on the issue, according to his own terms, was miserable.  Even the cheap date environmentalists started to notice by the end of his administration, which refused, keep in mind, even to submit the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification, or even to make any effort at all to push Kyoto ahead.  Maybe that’s because his own economists quietly told him that the Kyoto Protocol would cost the American economy more in one year that the Apollo project and the Marshall Plan combined.  Talk about an inconvenient truth.  But now Clinton says the lack of money is holding back green energy.

Clinton’s refusal to lift a finger for Al Gore’s pet project was why in 1998 the National Environmental Trust blasted the Clinton administration for its “intransigence,” for “abandoning the core principles of the [Kyoto] global warming treaty” and for “abandoning any pretence of living up to its rhetoric about cutting global warming pollution.”  And Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, one of the leading advocacy groups for urgent action on the issue, had harsh words for the Clinton administration after it left office: “Finally, I’d like to offer a special posthumous award to the Clinton administration.  For talking big about climate change on the international stage but doing next to nothing about it at home, I present the Clinton White House with the award for best costumes.”

I’m sure we can look forward to the same hectoring from former President Obama in a few years.

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