I watched about 25% of Richard Clarke's testimony Wednesday afternoon and made a mental note to try and catch the whole thing on some C-Span replay. On the evening's Daily Show, Jon Stewart raved about how fascinating it was, so I flipped over to C-Span, caught some more of it, then watched a little more on the C-Span website. (It's the file titled "September 11 Commission Hearing – Day 2, Afternoon Session" and it'll probably be there for at least a few weeks, if not longer. The whole video is three and a half hours but Clarke only speaks for about the first two hours and fifteen minutes.)
I still haven't seen it all but Mr. Stewart's right: It's a fascinating look at our government, complete with real world examples of how the bureaucracy prevents a lot of important things from being done. Clarke is cool and smart and very much in control most of the time. There was what struck me as a slightly disingenuous reply to a question about reconciling his current statements with that 2002 interview. He explained that as an officer of the Bush (or any) administration speaking to the press, it is his job to attempt to interpret the administration's actions and policies in the most favorable light. I'm paraphrasing here but that was the essence of what sounded to me like an attempt to not say, "Hey, if I'd said what I really felt then, they'd either have fired me or it would have been even harder to get anything accomplished." Other than that, he sounded pretty credible and he was also a lot more positive about the Bush administration than the advance hype might have led you to expect, or that the few quotes cited in this morn's press reports might indicate. I suspect that if and when the Bush administration is under fire for certain 9/11-related actions or inactions, they'll take to citing items in Richard Clarke's testimony as absolving them.
You should not bother watching the testimony if all you're looking for is to hear him trash Bush because he doesn't do that much of it, at least not in the parts I've seen. You should also not watch if you can't cope with someone saying that the Bush administration has made errors, because he does cite a number. I notice on some political sites this evening a drive to either interpret everything he says in the worst possible way for the White House, or to dismiss him as a partisan, lying low-life whose every utterance must be disbelieved. I think both those views are wrong. If you can tear yourself away from them, you might find his testimony quite interesting. This is a smart man and his overriding message today seemed to be not pro-Bush or anti-Bush but critical of a system that, he feels, did not allow a lot to be done that might have made us safer from terrorism. One hopes there's at least someone in Washington who cares about that more than they care about who wins in November.