Jennings gets tough with Clinton

In a prime-time television outburst, Bill Clinton ripped old nemesis Kenneth Starr and what the former president portrayed as a gullible media eager to report every "sleazy thing" leaked from a prosecutor bent on bringing him down.

• "No other president ever had to endure someone like Ken Starr," Clinton said. "No one ever had to try to save people from ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and people in Haiti from a military dictator that was murdering them, and all the other problems I dealt with, while every day an entire apparatus was devoted to destroying him."

(Waco, 3 failed opportunities to get bin Laden, selling nukes to China...)

• The former president said he would go to his grave at peace that, while he had personal failings, he never lied to the American people about his job as president.

  Clinton added that he doesn't care about what his detractors think about him. Jennings then said it seemed to him that Clinton did care.

  The former president responded, "You don't want to go here, Peter. You don't want to go here. Not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every, little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea what that's like."

  "You never had to live in a time when people you knew and cared about were being indicted, carted off to jail, bankrupted, ruined, because they were Democrats and because they would not lie," he said. "So, I think we showed a lot of moral fiber to stand up to that. To stand up to these constant investigations, to this constant bodyguard of lies, this avalanche that was thrown at all of us. And, yes, I failed once. And I sure paid for it. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the American people. And I'm sorry for the embarrassment they performed."

As usual, Clinton blames everyone but himself for the disastrous 8 years that were his Presidency. Sadly, many Americans think he did some really wonderful things for the country. Most often, they cite balancing the budget as his greatest achievement. The most powerful man in the world for 8 years, and the best thing he did was to raise taxes enough to cover huge spending programs. Wow.