May 7, 2013--Yassar Arafat and Led Zeppelin

When president, toward to end of his second term, in July 2000, stymied on the domestic front as are  all lame duck presidents, Bill Clinton turned to foreign policy and came very close to brokering a deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that would have created a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel that could have led to the possibility of lasting peace, and to Noble Prizes all around.

Clinton was so involved with the intimate details during the Camp David summit—including knowing which streets in Jerusalem would be Israeli and which controlled by Palestine—that he so persuasively overwhelmed Israel prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman, Yassar Arafat that they came stunningly close to signing on to the Clinton-negotiated plan.

Sadly, it is claimed that Arafat, at the last moment, after it appeared he would agree to the deal, walked away, fearing the political repercussions back home from more uncompromising Palestinians.

So it comes as little surprise that late last year Clinton attempted to negotiate another diplomatic coup—getting Led Zeppelin to agree to reunite and preform for one night at a benefit for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

But as with Arafat and Barak, he once again failed.

The CBS "60 Minutes Overtime" webcast reported Monday that the former president was enlisted to ask the British rock stars to perform together. David Saltzman of the Robin Hood Foundation says he and film executive Harvey Weinstein flew to Washington to ask Clinton to make the pitch. Led Zeppelin's surviving members Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and Jimmy Page were in Washington just before the Sandy concert for the Kennedy Center Honors. But they turned Clinton down.

There is no word on the record as to how Bill Clinton took the rejection. Obviously, less was at stake than at Camp David but, still, poor Bill Clinton can’t seem to catch a break.