Here we are counting down the last 2 1/2 years of this presidency, 29% of us high enough to still be satisfied with things. But for the rest of us, I ask the following:
How much of this is Clinton’s fault?
Recently, a Jerry posted a link, “Bill licks Bush.” Evocative, yes, but the point being, given a choice most Americans choose Bill on all counts. Clinton nostalgia only increases as each new scandal comes to light, as Bush continues to rule via his gut instead of his head.
This came up on Saturday. A liberal friend of mine (I have liberal friends, you’d never guess, would you?) held Clinton responsible for the disastrous Bush presidency. If he could’ve just kept his zipper up, friend argued, Bush would never have made it into the White House in the first place. Gore would have won in a landslide (so he says).
Some thoughts:
1. Bush didn’t win the elections, either of them. Do I have to wear a tinfoil hat to say this? I know a lot of people working in the television industry; even comedy shows have a tough time doing a story on Diebold. “So corrupt we don’t know where to begin. And we’d face less lawsuits if we ran a Scientology expose.” The first election Republicans won not so much through a Supreme Court decision but by using a scrub list. That strategy exposed, in the second round they went straight to the machinery, leading to election outcomes staggeringly different than the exit polls suggested.
2. Could any of us really have known how bad this presidency would be? I was never keen on Dubya, but prior to the election he was advocating humility in foreign relations. Bush’s win didn’t make me happy to say the least, but had I known how bad it would get, I might have taken up heroin. Sometimes, ignorance is mercy.
3. I’m not comfortable making judgments about people’s sexual lives. We’re all sinners here. I know, I know. “It wasn’t about sex, it was about perjury.” Bullshit. At best that’s insincere. It wasn’t enough to prove that Clinton and Lewinsky played with each other’s privates, we had to learn that he got her off with his cigar, that she gave him blowjobs during phone calls, and so forth until I knew more about Monica’s sex life than I did about mine. Long after his point was made, Ken Starr mined for salacious bonus tracks.
I think we can all agree that Clinton’s judgment here was wretched. I bet he’d agree too. If Dubya is a man who knows no regret, Clinton has many. In a radio interview that I can no longer find he listed three: the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, another, I think, was welfare, and the third, I can’t remember the third. But I do remember that he was self-reflective, admitting as much of embarrassing personal conceits as of failures in aptitude or strategy. There were no excuses then.
That question was phrased politically, so he did not list Monica. But that brings us back to square one: should he have? Yes, the political ramifications of the affair have been enormous. Count every dead soldier among them. Still, I can’t personally bring myself to blame these deaths on the man whose hand in history unwittingly led us to where we are now. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes the fate of the world rides on it. I suppose he should have known the difference, but, I mean, really. Back then, McCain wasn’t courting Jerry Falwell. Bush advocated sensible spending. It was just a little oval office sex. Could anyone have predicted Guantanamo?
Meanwhile, Dubya, barring kingship, will graduate from the White House just pleased as punch that he caught the world’s largest perch. Note to Dubya: not admitting mistakes isn’t the same as not making them. And to you I ask, can we blame the idiot, or is Clinton the man that gave him the job?
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