Via The Horse we find Michael Wolf's article in New York Magazine about the recent Aspen Institute conference:

The psychic heart of the conference was Bill Clinton.

Clinton had lost weight and—with a great collection of just-out-of-the-wrapper pastel-colored polo shirts on view throughout the conference—seemed in fabulous form. He was in campaign mode but without the restraints of campaign mode. While there was clear bitterness on his part toward the successor who had rushed “to undo everything I’d done,” and the Republicans who “will run over you unless you beat their brains out,” there was a feisty humor too. ...

Clinton kept referring to the media as (contrary to Kinsley’s view) the “supine” media, pointing out that when Bush insulted Helen Thomas (who, by asking a rough question in the infamous prewar press conference had, Clinton said, “committed the sin of journalism”), no “young journalists” stood up and walked out. The media, the supine media, was going to have to “go to the meat locker and take out its brains and critical skills.”

Everybody seemed to love this. Clinton was not just the beloved former president, but he had become some sort of sassy oracle.

There's more, read the whole thing. It sure made us miss Bill-- and get angry all over again that we got stuck with GW who has given us nothing but war and Ashcroft and judicial ideologues, sending our economy and civil liberties, not to mention hundreds of our young soldiers, down the drain, all in the first two years of his presidency.

2004 is only 15 months away. We still see a Democratic party in disarray with no candidate knocking us out or even making us want to go to bat for him. We hope something breaks soon.