Clinton tells young Scots: always live your dream

azzuri · Clinton tells young Scots: always live your dream

Clinton tells young Scots: always live your dream

see - http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/61821.html

No doubt about it, we've missed William Jefferson Clinton since he's been gone. There again, now that he is the star-turn of the international lecture circuit, the 42nd president of the United States is rarely gone for very long. Yesterday, it was Glasgow's chance to assess his oratorical magic, and the Comeback Kid didn't disappoint.

In a wide-ranging speech of powerful erudition, Mr Clinton focused on world events and world dilemmas ranging from globalisation – which he prefers to call "global inter-dependence" – to the unprecedented wealth to be generated for all peoples by tackling the earth's perilous warming with real clean-energy enterprise.

Here, before a rapt audience at the city's Thistle Hotel of 550 guests, being charged £500-a-head, he courteously but unmistakably took aim at George Bush's intransigence on climate change.

But Mr Clinton's most impassioned reflections concerned children. "Kids need to be encouraged to dream," he said. "Then, they do not need to be discouraged. Just because they grow up in a single-parent household, just because they grow up in a family without education, or parents who don't have money – what really matters, is in here," he said, gesturing to his heart.

Wherever he went in his unofficial role as a sort of care-taking Mr Universe, he saw that intelligence, talent and the ability to dream were evenly distributed.

"But opportunities, investment and systems for advancement aren't (evenly distributed). Yet I know that kids in Africa, India, Pakistan or Russia can be just as good as me if they have the chances I had in life. Children's dreams should be nourished, else you never can tell how it will turn out."

There is about Mr Clinton a certain evangelical flourish, the Southern drawl and elegant hand gestures reminiscent of the old-fashioned style of a preacher man. He walks into a crowded room with the easy aplomb of someone who knows that his very entrance holds people spellbound.

Speaking without notes for an hour-and-a-half, an irrepressible Bill Clinton proved that even though he is no longer the most powerful man in the world, he remains one of America's most remarkable public figures, a leader who still stands dazzlingly head and shoulders above all other leaders in the world today.

But of those whom he met during his Oval Office years, he said he most remembered Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated prime minister of Israel. Mr Clinton said he still thought about him every day and believed that, if he had lived, there would now be permanent peace in the Middle East.

From Nelson Mandela, he learned the importance of not clinging to hatred of one's enemies. On the day of Mr Mandela's release from prison on Robben Island, he insisted his daughter, Chelsea, watch the event live on TV, and later asked him how he had coped with the hatred he must have felt.

"He said: 'I wanted to be free, so I let it go.' He was a great help to me," Mr Clinton mused, as if in reference to his own enemies, who were out to rock his presidency from the beginning. In Europe, there was Helmut Kohl, a considerable statesman who helped bring about the reunification of Germany.

A consummate politician, Mr Clinton is also a consummate performer. His two-term occupancy of the White House gave his country its best time in 40 years, yet his Washington tenure broke almost every rule in the book.

Yesterday, he was at it again. Convention dictates a former president respectfully supports his successor. But Mr Clinton repeatedly spoke of his "great disappointment" that the Bush government walked away from the Kyoto treaty on climate change.

Referring only once to the Iraq war, he said: "Iraq may or may not stay together as a coherent country," coded criticism from a man who perhaps subconsciously feels himself a president-in-exile. But there was subtle praise for his close friend, Tony Blair. Their shared belief in "Third Way" politics was still the right course, he said in what he called "a little plug for the home team here". Over time, of course, we have seen many Clintons: the intellectual class act running rings around his Republican foes; the foreign policy braveheart striving to facilitate peace in Northern Ireland and the Middle East; the sentimentalist recalling his childhood hardship in a town called Hope; the chastened philanderer fighting against rabid moral righteousness and political hypocrisy of those who would still revive the tumbrels of McCarthyism in America.

But the Clinton we saw yesterday was the eloquent sophisticate. That beleaguered appearance which marked him during the Lewinsky interrogations has disappeared.

Now in his 60th year, and fit from the major heart surgery he underwent in 2004, he is one of those men who has gained urbanity with age. There is not one feature on his face that technically might be called handsome, yet the overall impression is one of immense charm.

Does he miss the White House? You bet. "I loved the job. I loved the job," he said, with an intensity that mingled gratitude with regret for something lost. Yet here he is, articulate, intelligent, and colourful, a class act. The Comeback Kid who never quite goes away.

The promoters

The three mystery Glasgow businessman behind yesterday's event were named last night as Satty Singh, Raj Bedi, and Ajay Chopra, who formed the A&S Promotions consortium less than a year ago to bring such high-profile speakers to Scotland.

At least one more is planned this year, and not necessarily in Glasgow.

Mr Singh, who owns Mr Singh's restaurant in the city as well as Mearns Castle Golf Centre, said: "My partners and I brought Bill Clinton to Glasgow because we believed it would be a very positive event for the city and the country. Bringing people of the stature of President Clinton to Scotland puts the country on a global stage."

The trio worked with World Celebrity Events, which represents the former president within Europe.

Aventinian

A bit arse-kissing that article, but I do agree - Clinton was and is a fine man and a very appropriate role model.

azzuri

I agree also, a very likeable guy. He could've been president until death had the 'two term' rule in the USA not been in place.

And I think the world would've been a better place for it too.