Conason: Clinton is back in business

by: Pacific John

Tue Sep 22, 2009 at 22:05:41 PM EDT

Mocking predictions that he'd be sidelined or prove an irritant to his wife, Clinton is back in business, kicking off his annual meeting this week with an address from Obama.

As the Clinton Global Initiative prepares to commence its fifth annual meeting in New York City on Tuesday, Bill Clinton's army of efficient minions has been checking off their lists. On Monday, the press center was open and functioning in the basement of the Sheraton Centre; the television trucks had begun to surround the perimeter of the hotel; and a parade of government, corporate, and nonprofit leaders from around the world already were gliding up to the airy suite where the former president holds court in private.

In short, Clinton is doing global business as usual. And as usual, he is mocking the widespread predictions last winter that his wife's new role as secretary of State would somehow sideline him and his foundation-or that he would prove to be an irritant to her and President Obama.

Read!

[...] Well into his post-presidency, he is among the most ambitious of statesmen and still influences nonprofit, corporate, and government behavior across the world. Presiding over a multibillion-dollar philanthropic enterprise, he is anything but irrelevant or constrained. He is not a liability, as his critics in the Washington punditocracy will forever insist. For an administration with imagination and guts, he could yet become an indispensable asset.