James Taranto, "Best of the Web"
"A peace agreement between Israel and Syria could be reached within 35 minutes, former U.S. president Bill Clinton told the Lebanon-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper in an interview published Sunday," reports the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.
Bill Clinton was president for 4,207,680 minutes, which is enough time to broker more than 120,000 35-minute peace agreements. Granted, a man has to sleep and tend to other basic necessities of life, and the president has tons of responsibilities, so eight years isn't as much time as it sounds like. But Clinton's time wasn't that tight. Consider these footnotes from the Starr report:
135. Currie 1/27/98 GJ at 35-36 (testifying that Ms. Lewinsky and the President were in the Oval Office for "[p]erhaps 30 minutes."). . . .
136. Ferguson 7/17/98 GJ at 23-35 (alone for approximately 45 minutes). . . .
138. Fox 2/17/98 GJ at 30-38 (alone for approximately 40 minutes).
139. Bordley 8/13/98 GJ at 19-30 (alone for approximately 30 to 35 minutes). . . .
141. Byrne 7/30/98 GJ at 7-12, 29-32 (alone for 15 to 25 minutes).
By our count, that is between 160 and 175 minutes Clinton spent . . . well, at this late date there's no need to rehash what he was doing. Point is, if he had managed his time better, he could have arranged a peace between Israel and Syria, and who knows what other great things he might have accomplished in the remaining 125 to 140 minutes? |