Why America napped

Did Clinton not respond to what senior intelligence analysts said about the threats of terrorism?

I'm not an expert on that. But Clinton always reflected the country, and the country was not on red alert because it wanted to binge on the post-Cold War era. Part of this binging was concentration on the domestic economy. You had two levels: people being hurt by the domestic economy and those who binged when it began to turn around. Clinton was not in any rush to get ahead of that parade.

One of the ways to see Clinton is as an astonishing extension of a national mood. He understood exactly where the polls were and exactly how much political support there was for something. Also, he had very fragile constituencies within the Democratic Party. He was always tiptoeing and not about to take on, by and large, any issue that had too much of an undertow or any issue without a larger constituency.

Remember that book by John Kennedy about England before World War II, "Why England Slept"? The subtitle of my book could be "Why America Napped." The most telling story is about Clinton's election in 1992 right before he was inaugurated. He comes to Washington to meet with the House Democratic chairmen. When he gets to Lee Hamilton of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Hamilton says, "Well, Mr. President, we have China. Whatever you do on China, you're only going to please half the people. Then, there's Saddam Hussein " Clinton interrupts him and says, "Lee, I've been traveling around our country for a year and no one cares about foreign policy other than about six journalists." Hamilton is taken aback and replies, "That may be true, but the last presidents have been defined by foreign affairs."

In the book, I followed up with this quote from Robert Kagan: "If you're the President of the United States, you don't find trouble, the trouble finds you." In essence, Clinton reflected the national mood. Had there been one more term, had he not been pulled down by the Lewinsky thing, thereby losing two years of his second term, it might have been different.

Because he did start to focus on foreign policy later on in his presidency?

There was a greater interest in foreign policy and a greater awareness. When he was presented issues, he knew exactly what to do. But if you're president, the question is: How much of your limited powder do you allot to stuff like this?

Do you think he was sufficiently aggressive in pursuing bin Laden and terrorism in general?

It's only fair to him to put the blame on all of us, including myself. The worst offenders are the networks because they are really a crucial part of the circulatory system of democracy. There was a time in the '60s and the '70s when the networks' reporters were an extension of the very media of which I was a part: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times and the Wall Street Journal. That's changed radically. With the exception of "Nightline," they've gotten out of the serious news business. In the last 10 years, the people who have been rewarded with the highest salaries have been awarded for doing the most trivial work: the male and female divas, the people who are so good at artificial empathy. And when you start doing celebrity and scandal and sex, not only is it bad of itself, it affects the larger populace.

They're doing this because they're getting signals from those great patriots who poll the American people to find out what the American people want to know. They find out that the American people want to be entertained and they send back signals to do fluffier, warmer, more endearing reporting. As that happens, the national debate gets more trivial. Foreign policy gets played down. The rest of the world becomes a place we don't need to know about. The people in the inner government charged with representing our needs and our obligations to the rest of the world are diminished, their role atrophied. They get less resources. Their voices are dimmed in inner circles.

Next page: Tom Brokaw's pandering to the Greatest Generation