Clinton took very tough decisions on the economy.

As I said, if you don't stand up for yourself, people aren't going to think that you can stand up for them.

In a sense, George W. Bush has used the tragedy of the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the nightmarish expansion of his idea of a war on terror to overshadow his actual conduct in office on the redistribution of wealth upward through progressive tax cuts that actually penalize the vast majority of the public, and shift their resources to a narrow band at the very, very top.

We barely missed killing Bin Laden. There were numerous findings issued by the President to kill him. We rolled up terrorist cells. We stopped the millennium bombings.

Bill Clinton was in the line of great progressive presidents who faced the realities in his own time and applied innovative solutions to problems.

But presidents matter. That's one of the biggest lessons I learned being in the White House.

In every single case, the truth is that the atmosphere created by the Iraq invasion and the staggeringly mismanaged occupation has incited terrorists to act. It's been a contributing factor. It's unavoidable throughout Europe - in Spain, in Germany, in Britain. The truth is that we need long-term American policy to shift in order to really soak up and get rid of these sources of terrorism that threaten our Western allies.