Only Bill Clinton could go to North Korea

Because he’s the only guy a crazy dictator would acquiesce to meeting with. The administration was stuck between a rock and a hard place; it would be unconscionable to consign two innocent Americans to the North Korean gulag, but you don’t want to reward this blatant snatch-and-grab with an official state visit.

What I find most interesting, however, were the people (a number of my friends included) who tripped all over themselves to praise Bill Clinton as this great negotiator who freed the innocent journalists. I’d be interested to know just how much “negotiation” actually took place. My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that there was no quid pro quo in the sense of “we’ll look the other way on x if you set them free” because the quid pro quo was the simple act of Bill Clinton showing up and granting the bugnuts dictator a photo op he can show to his people (accompanied by some caption like “President Bill Clinton lies prostrate before the Supreme Leader, who mercifully frees the American spies to show his grand benevolence”) in order to bolster his legitimacy within the regime.

Does this make a big difference in the long run? Probably not. The Hermit Kingdom will continue as is regardless. But it is galling that we had to allow one of our most famous emissaries to be used in such a manner.