Bill Clinton Stirs the Fear of Terror

Bill knows what he’s talking about. In 1995, during his first term, American terrorists blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and killed hundreds of Americans. And the 42nd [president] finds that the spontaneous anger that expresses itself today toward Washington has commonalities with that of 1995. Did he make too many comparisons?

It is the worst nightmare that a United States president can have. Look at his term chipped by interior terrorism, and he was unable to prevent it. By terrorism perpetrated by American citizens against American citizens, by people almost the same as you and me, driven crazy and desperate by politicians’ inability to act. By the inability to be heard. These Americans — not all assassins! — whom we quickly decked out with the disdainful nickname of “little whites,” found a cousin distinctly more chic, but toxic just the same: Joseph Stack, the 53-year-old kamikaze who, at the joystick of his airplane, launched himself into the Internal Revenue Service office in Austin, Texas, to hurl his hate of taxation and his life… not really different, but less murderous.

That is what Bill Clinton wanted to make clear in his speech at the Center for American Progress, as he evoked the 1995 massacre that remains a gaping wound in the U.S. He wanted to make a political projection of it and to flash the warnings. Of course, as a statesman, he put on the mittens and gauged each word. That is the model of the genre. He spoke of “legitimate” possible comparisons between the manifestations of anger and resentment expressed by small-town Americans toward the Washington of Barack Obama. He believed that the “fever” and the anti-government sentiment of 1995 were not recalled without reminding him of what is happening today. In addition, there was significant unemployment and a need to socialize these worries to resolve them.

And Clinton returned to that “fever” and the climate of very significant violence that reigned in cities, with powerful and destructive gangs. If he established connections between the American world of 1995 and that of today, he brought to them a considerable nuance, and attempted to tame the members of the Tea Party movement. It was precisely put and, from the beginning, he catapulted his conviction that the energy that built that force must not lead to violence, even, he admits, if it is the same type of anger that reigned before the Oklahoma City attack. The difference is that he recognizes in the Tea Party a healthy role in American political life: ensure that each dollar invested yields something for the common good. Guardian of the Temple? Yes, maybe, unless rage gets a hold of people and pushes them to the opposite of what they claim to want to accomplish. There it is said.

And then, a little course in political semantics. Still tied to the attack of 1995. It is the violence of words accumulated for years that served to light this forest fire. Therefore, pay attention to words and their impact. Be combative, defend your ideas, but be careful with words. Through his own words, we understood that words had killed in 1995. Bill Clinton, in telling that story, filled the role of the founding fathers that former presidents can play to state the rule of the game when they are sensible politicians. One loves Bill like that, the husband of the secretary of state!