I got the chance tonight to sit down with Bill Clinton as part of a "blogger meeting" with fourteen other people, in conjunction with the Clinton Global Initiative that's happening in New York City this week.

I didn't get to ask him my question, about how the CGI works to ensure they're backing appropriate technologies in their development work. So I'm not sure how much of the meeting was useful to me for blogging purposes. But it was fascinating to see Clinton in action, dissecting and analyzing everything thrown in front of him, and doing it from every angle -- political, policy, economic, you name it.

Let me demonstrate by paraphrasing one story he told. He was down in Eagle Pass, Texas, stumping for Hillary on the eve of the Texas primary. He was standing on the back of a pickup, wearing cowboy boots. The winds were blowing 50 miles per hour. He thought he'd get blown right off the back of that truck! And you know what? He looked around, and there was not a windmill in sight. Can you believe it? This, despite the fact that Bush's own energy department issued a report saying that we could power the entire U.S. with windmills from east Texas to the Canadian border. And despite all this, the Democrats are going to agree to offshore drilling without getting an extension in wind credits in exchange. "Let's get sometin' for it," he said.

The man is a force.