It will be a big event, and I’m looking forward to sucking up all of the big ideas being tossed around.

This evening I had the opportunity to sit down with about 15 other bloggers for a pre-CGI meeting with the big idea man himself, Bill Clinton. Apparently Clinton wanted to get to know the bloggers — this new traveling pack of journalists-cum-activists — who will be attending, and I think we all gladly obliged. Regardless of our opinions of the man, who could say no to such an intimate meeting on the 45th floor of the Sheraton?

When we arrived Clinton was in a meeting with the new president of Paraguay, the ex-bishop and left-leaning Fernando Lugo. He was in good spirits when he greeted us, and quickly made a few friendly references to Lugo and Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia and one of the growing number of Bush Administration bogeymen. I immediately thought, Remember back when our president didn’t view every leader as a potential threat?

It turns out Morales is interested in getting computers to rural Indians, and since Clinton’s good friend John Chambers happens to be the CEO of Cisco… you can probably see where that was going.

As expected, Clinton waxed thoughtful and verbose about a variety of topics, sometimes related to the questions at hand and sometimes not. But the ongoing financial crisis, it was clear, was weighing very heavily on his mind.

In brief: He blamed an action of Alan Greenspan’s (but not Greenspan himself) for some of the current financial miseries we’re facing. Back in 2001, Greenspan injected a bunch of cash into the market, but, Clinton said, all that money got invested in the housing and credit markets and nowhere else. Had he been president (a repeating refrain), Clinton would have made sure that those investments were diversified, focusing on new forms of renewable energy along with traditional investments. But instead, a narrow investment mindset created the housing bubble and led to the sub-prime loan mess. “The absence of a sensible economic policy meant that all of this sloshing around of money got misspent,” he told us.

Plus, said Clinton, “President Bush goes to war with Iraq and at the same time gives people a tax cut, something that’s never been done in the history of the Republic.”

He’s not opposed to the current bailout plan being floated by Paulson and Bernanke, but he’s worried that working Americans won’t see any benefit. “The legislation that Paulson and Chairman Bernanke is necessary but not sufficient because it doesn’t deal with a whole range of Main St. issues.” Essentially, he wants the government to bail out these companies but rather than do so by issuing high-interest loans, as is being proposed, he thinks we should require that, once these companies start making money again, a certain amount of the profits should go to taxpayers.

Sound progressive? Bill used the word a few times, which makes me think that either he’s jumping onto the bandwagon of a nationwide movement, or he’s feeling feisty in an election year. Probably a mixture of both.

There was a bit more talk about global warming, but most of us didn’t get a chance to ask questions — Bill was holding court, which was acceptable and expected. Alas, my question, about what the U.S. can do to help China and India continue to grow but without polluting the whole planet, never left my lips.

On Wednesday I’ll be back at the Sheraton, watching folks like Queen Rania of Jordan, Al Gore, and, yes, Bono, hold their own courts. Stay tuned.

Oh yeah: here’s the requisite pic of me and Bill.

McCain’s campaign has engaged in sleaze and slander on a scale that’s surprising everyone who knows him, and his choice for VP has not raised questions about his ability to lead, but could also mean that someone who had never left the U.S. — never even had the desire! — until visiting troops in Kuwait, someone who supports the banning of books and the eradication of choice, who denies our role in global warming, who thinks that creationism ought be taught in public schools, who doesn’t believe in sex education or the use of stem cells for research, and who has been on the national scene for approximately two weeks, might be president in the near future.  It’s terrifying.

We need to do all we can to elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden, two candidates who exemplify all that John McCain Sarah Palin are not.  But here’s the wrinkle: I’m having a child in October.  I can’t leave my family to volunteer in a swing state, and I can’t take a leave from my job to help out with the campaign.

So given that I’ll be at home with a young child — whose future could be so bright if Obama is elected — how can I channel all of my excess energy in ensuring that my kid grows up governed by an Obama Administration?

“I need to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago… I want to know that, I really do, because she’s going to have the nuclear codes.”

Jill smartly sums up growing opinion about what if this were Obama’s daughter who’d gotten pregnant. She brings up an excellent, if upsetting, point about race-based double standards (emphasis mine):

Wow. Could not have said it better myself. There remains a stereotype
that African-Americans have poor morals. If Barack Obama’s
daughter were pregnant, you’d better believe that pundits would
be tsk-tsking the dysfunctional “black family” and there
would be plenty of b-roll of black pregnant teens in our public schools
with talk about the single black welfare queens & the national
burden they create. That’s the double standard — Palin is
permitted to individualize where Obama is not.

The white Palin is perceived as everymom and her own person at once; a black Palin would be tasked with answering for her entire race.

UPDATE: This bit from Daily Show shows the crazy and hysterical hypocrisy coming from Karl, Bill, Dick, and co.

Expectations are so low for Palin, and the opportunity to connect
with the growing viewing audience so high – like a hit TV show that
lifts the ratings of the show that follows it, will McCain bask in the
afterglow of Palin’s success on Thursday night? Or will McCain be on
hand to provide the damage control for his own errant judgment?

It is too early to tell. But the mistake is to see the controversies
and questions around Sarah Palin as damaging, they may turn out that
way and John McCain may pay the price – but for now the interest they
are creating in Palin may actually be building the moment and the
opportunity John McCain and the GOP need to successfully turn the page.

My Democratic friends and I had a gleeful Labor Day weekend. We saw the McCain campaign deal with one piece of craziness after another (see TPM for a recap) and Obama’s poll numbers shot up.

But Palin could likely impress America when she’s unveiled later this week. Yes, expectations are low, she does have a folksy charm, and the only direction the GOP can go is up. So maybe we’l see a bit of a bounce, but I’m increasingly confident that, when viewed next to the McCain/Palin comedy troupe, Obama/Biden are looking pretty secure and serious to most Americans right now.

(We at techPresident also worked hard on our own version of an online debate, producing 10Questions.)

Such innovation was particularly on display at the MySpace/MTV candidate “dialogues,” an update from MTV’s old townhall-style sessions from the Clinton era. The dialogues used the full power of the social web to involve viewers and voters from across the country in a conversation with the candidates.

So one would expect that MySpace, which has clearly used their tools to push the envelope, would, uh, push the envelope. But it looks like the vice grip of the Commission on Presidential Debates has squeezed the fun and — more importantly — the democracy out of these newfangled debates.

Basically, the video of the Obama/McCain debates will be streamed and you can embed it. Golly!

Micah at techPresident registers the appropriate amount of outrage:

What they’re offering us here is little more than live video streaming, which is like, so, year 2000. When you consider what YouTube and CNN did in the past year, along with what MySpace and MTV did, as well as what we did with 10Questions.com–in each case to expand voter participation in debates and in some cases open new kinds of feedback loops, you have to admit this is really disappointing. Honestly, it would almost be better if they didn’t bother to include MySpace. (And one might want to ask, why only MySpace when plenty of other sites and services could provide this video service?)

Sigh. And things were getting so fun.