Hillary should thank her lucky stars that Bill was around for North Korea's publicity stunt/photo op release of these young woman.
I seem to recall North Korea calling Hillary an "unintelligent, funny lady" recently...
Politico adds some historical perspective:
A controversy-prone ex-president rides to the rescue to defuse a crisis provoked by an erratic dictatorship on the Korean Peninsula. Most people breathe a sigh of relief, but there are skeptics who wonder if the breakthrough was won through appeasement.
Not only has Bill Clinton seen this movie before, he’s starred in it — though in a different role than the one he’s playing this week with his burst of globe-trotting diplomacy in North Korea.
The 42nd president’s success in forging a behind-the-scenes deal for the release of two American journalists in exchange for Clinton’s surprise appearance in Pyongyang may signal a new chapter in one of the United States’s most vexing and dangerous relationships. Or it may turn out to be another false start with an isolated and paranoid regime.
In either event, however, this week marks a curious full circle in the life of Bill Clinton, who until this week was an elder statesman who seemed without a clear identity or useful role in Barack Obama’s presidency. A Clinton adviser said the former president is ready and eager for more Obama assignments.
History, it turns out, is full of inside jokes.
The first time Clinton found himself in a stare-down with North Korea was in the spring of 1994. Then, Clinton was an unseasoned new president, still seen by many in the public and some of his own aides as wobbly in the face of foreign crises.
With deep reluctance, Clinton was on the brink of ordering a major military buildup in response to North Korea’s decision to end international inspections and start a nuclear bomb-building program. Inside Clinton’s government, many thought the buildup itself might provoke war on the peninsula. North Korea, delicate as ever, was warning of a “sea of flames.”
In 1994, the ex-president roaming on the Korea scene was Jimmy Carter. The Clinton White House had not exactly invited him to go to North Korea, but — since Carter made clear he was going anyway — it had not tried to dissuade him either.
At the last minute, even as Clinton was in a meeting to approve the buildup, Carter struck a deal in which North Korea claimed it would halt its nuclear program in exchange for direct talks with the United States. Carter went on CNN to announce the deal, while Clinton’s aides in Washington stared at their sets and groaned at the former president’s grandstanding.
Unlike Carter, Clinton was plainly not freelancing on his assignment to win the release of documentary journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Though ostensibly in Pyongyang as a “private citizen,” he was there with the approval of the White House and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Like Carter, however, Clinton is finding that the best place to prove his relevance as an ex-president is in international hot spots.
A Clinton admirer, Democratic commentator Donna Brazile, said the North Korea trip shows “Bill Clinton still has the juice.
“I hope this is a sign of things to come,” she added, “given all the fires that this country faces. People trust him, and he has an important role to play. And this shows President Obama’s determination to try all kinds of diplomacy, including third-party diplomacy.”
Obama advisers were not willing to discuss Clinton’s role on the record. On background, one said, “This big victory helps him get his groove back.” The sentiment is notable, given the skepticism that still exists in many quarters of Obama’s inner circle since the Obama-Clinton sniping during the 2008 Democratic primaries.
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