Does anyone know if Clinton really warned Blair to stay away from Bush after he "won" the 2000 election? It seems almost too prophetic to be true, but then Clinton is a pretty intelligent guy (despite his lack of moral scruples!)
it doesn't ring true in my opinion....
shareNo one really knows, of course, except for Bill and Tony. But a Democratic president wouldn't need to be especially prophetic to predict that a too-cozy relationship with a Republican president would cause serious issues for a Labour PM.
sharei think he was talking specifically about the line where Clinton says Bush came into office unlawfully and will go out the same way...that was just a little too "on the nose" considering how Liberals think of the Bush presidency now
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So if Clinton warned Blair about Bush/Cheney...
And if Clinton warned Bush about Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden...
and neither of them listened..
What does that say about our choice of elected leaders??
This is for Allah... and it's going way out there sucka...
True or not, it was the best part of Clinton's role in the TV movie. The rest of it had him in stereotype parody. It's possible that Clinton warned him, but I don't think we will ever know.
shareI don't think Clinton's role was too stereotyped. The doughnut pig out in bed was a bit (hilariously) over the top, but all in all I think you got a good sense of the guy's true character.
It was typical liberal Bush-bashing. They couldn't just make a movie about Blair and Clinton's relationship without somehow bashing Bush. And they did just that.
It seems that the makers want to ignore the fact that Blair and Bush themselves had a "special relationship" as well. But Blair and Bush being friends does not fit the narrative the film-makers wanted to put out, so that stuff was added at the end. Too bad. Up until that tripe, it was actually a pretty good movie.
Sorry your Conservative bias prohibited you from enjoying a good film. Bush and Blair had special (some would say infamous) relationship as well, but I think their rapport would take a few more hours to fully explore. I think that the the aim of this film was to show how Blair emulated Clinton's path to victory, and ultimately his maturation as a leader in his own right. It accomplished that aim as far as I'm concerned. I would also like to see an unbiased film about Blair and Bush's relationship, but I doubt HBO is would undertake another Blair project.
I love how the neo-con calls it Bush-bashing when the filmmakers simply show actual footage of the real Bush and Blair as a coda to the film. You're right, it's always unfair to show actual footage of Bush making a fool of himself. All that footage should be burned so that it doesn't threaten the myth of Bush as a competent president. Of course, I can't help worrying that burning all that footage might bring about a nuclear winter.
I always knew that neocons consider reality to be "biased".
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The part where Clinton wonders if Blair ever was centre-left was particularly hilarious.
Most Labour supporters in the media simply can't forgive Blair for not listening to them all the time but then winning three elections.
It's probably worth bearing in mind that the first film in this series held out the promise of great leadership under Gordon Brown once Blair was out of the way.
Labour lost three times as many votes between 1997 and 2005 as they did between 2005 and 2010. Brown didn't throw away a glorious legacy, he inherited a government already in a death-spiral. Labour only won 36% of the popular vote in 2005 - that should never have given them a Parliamentary majority, it's just that the constituency boundaries had been drawn to favour them (which the Tories are now using as justification for their own gerrymandering, so that they can steal 2015 the same way).
1997 was won by offering hope to a nation desperate for any alternative to the appalling Major government: anyone who imagines that Smith, if he'd lived, or Brown, if he'd succeeded in 1994, wouldn't have won that election by a landslide is delusional. 2001 was coasted on low turnout and the utter lack of competent opposition: if Labour had enthused its base, turnout would have been a damn sight better. 2005 should never have been won outright: and that decline owed a lot to Blair's lurch to the right. The decline from then to 2010 was far more gradual, despite a massive financial crisis (mostly made in America) being chucked on top of the bitterness Blair had left behind him.
I'm no Brownite. In fact I've never voted Labour in my life. But the idea that SuperBlair saved Labour and then the left (as if the Brownites were ever really of the left anyway) blew it all is a myth.