Bill Clinton speaks

Must read of the day is this interview with Bill Clinton on ABC News' "This Week." This could be the singularly most honest assessment of the Bush presidency that I've seen to date by an entrenched politician. One wonders what got into old Bill considering how cozy he's been with Daddy Bush lately, what with all this fundraising going on for disaster victims, but I'm not complaining God.

Please give me more talk like this.

"Tax cuts are always popular," Clinton said. "But about half of these tax cuts since 2001 have gone to people in my income group, the top 1 percent. I've gotten four tax cuts.

"Now, what Americans need to understand is that that means every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts," Clinton added. "We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense. I think it's wrong."

He wimped out on Iraq, dancing around the policy failures to say we have to hope it will work out - no kidding - and if it was working at all I'd be the first one, if not to support it, at least to accept it. But hey he's still a politician and his wife is up for re-election so I suppose we couldn't expect better on that score. Nonetheless, he offers this ray of hope at the end.

The country in 2008, and I think in 2006, will be in a desperate mood to come together and move forward. I think they're going to reject ideological solutions that are not fact-based, and I think they're going to want a government that works.

I only hope he's right.