new yorker and bill clinton at 60 and post presidency

On the occasion of Bill Clinton's 60th birthday the New Yorker magazine, in its September 18 edition, presented a story about the ex-President that is long even by its prodigious standards. Written by editor David Remnick, the story follows Clinton on a recent trip beginning in Germany at the World Cup finals and then touring through Africa. The tone of the article is broadly affirmative and appropriately critical, since even as Clinton-friendly a publication as the New Yorker wouldn't allow itself to give a complete whitewash of Bill (unlike how it handled another Bill--Billy Graham--a few months ago). What I would like to do in this and the next essay is to focus on what I call the paradox of Bill Clinton: on the one hand he was a President with immense and visible failures and, on the other hand, he remains the most popular US President in this country and around the world in decades. How do the two ideas "fit"?

The Clinton Presidency--All Too Briefly

When Clinton rode into office on January 20, 1993 in the long motorcade beginning at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, the nation should have realized that this very young President was a man of mammoth ambitions and striking symbolisms. Yet, the first year or so of his presidency saw him flouder painfully, with misstep followed by false step. It seemed that the words of Ross Perot in the comical 1992 Presidential debates might be coming true: that there was quite a difference between running a mom & pop store (i.e., the State of Arkansas) and Wal-Mart (i.e., the US Government; Wal-Mart is the largest company headquartered in Arkansas). One after one came the failures. He handled the issue of gays in the military ineptly; he attacked the drug companies ruthlessly just before he launched a national health care initiative; he began that health care initiative without first having earned his political capital in Washington; he did nothing in response to the Rwandan civil war in 1994. And, then, in 1995, during the shutdown of the US Government when Republicans and Democrats were arguing over the budget, he met up with a young woman who worked at the White House, Monica Lewinsky, whose name, face and hair made it into the tabloids for the next four years. Clinton also made the rather inexplicable misstep of appointing a special prosecutor in Ken Starr, who had loathed Clinton for decades and who would marshal all the funds at his disposal to try to expose, literally, the sexual pecadilloes of the President. Thus, Clinton shot himself not only in the foot repeatedly, but also in several more vital organs.

What Clinton Brought to America

But the Clinton legacy cannot be summed up solely in these terms. He seemed to touch a deep nerve in America, both among those who loved him and those who detested him. I think he became immensely popular in the US and abroad for three reasons. First, he interpreted the world and America in clear and understandable terms. Never underestimate the importance of someone who can interpret and explain clearly what is going on. When Jesus said that the harvest was great but the laborers were few, he was referrring to those who would spread his word to a waiting world. To change Jesus' image slightly, I would say that the confused hearers are many but those who set out to explain the world are very few. I think Jesus should have added another Beatitude to Matthew 5: "Blessed are the interpreters, for they shall be called the Friends of God."

Bill Clinton had an uncanny knack of how to explain the world. Oh, he was wordy and he often couldn't tell the difference between a relevant comment and one of marginal relevance (a fault that he carried over in his autobiography, too), but when he lazered in on a topic, he was without peer. He showed a policy wonk's interest in broad principles and specific facts; he showed an instant and confident command of the programs and possibilities of the US government; he demonstrated a political flexibility that tried to move the Democratic party more to the "center" of American life; he could inspire by stories of his own past as well as the struggles and victories of others.

Second, Bill Clinton, in a word, made America rich. I don't know why he doesn't play this up more or others don't emphasize this point on his behalf, but I think that one of the reasons that his popularity remained high was that he made Republicans very rich and most of them didn't have either the stomach or the ethics to vilify him after that. One might argue that it wasn't actually Clinton who made people rich but the vagaries of the market and the fact that the Internet came into full swing during his Presidency (thus leading to fantasic valuations of Internet-based companies), but if President Bush wants to take credit for the War on Terrorism, I think that Bill Clinton can take credit for the enriching of America. Some of the enrichment came through changes in the tax code, such as the increase in excludable gains from the sale of a home, but a lot of it came through the rapid gains in the stock market.

I think the most dramatic indication of this increase in wealth was a change in the attitude or mind-set of baby boomers. Many of my friends, who had always considered themselves "middle-class" or "prosperous" but not "wealthy," now began to see themselves as "wealthy." They could give more of their money away; they contemplated and actually took early retirement; they built bigger houses and bought second and third houses; they took longer trips. In other words, I would claim that there were probably several million people in America during the Clinton Presidency whose economic status took a dramatic change for the better. People don't forget those who made them rich.

Third, I think Clinton became popular because of his very vulnerability. He was and remains a person of immense intellect and personal charm, but we could see his foibles and shortcomings so easily that it provoked a wave of sympathy for him even as Ken Starr and others sought to vilify him with charges of financial mismanagement or fraud (Whitewater) or with moral transgressions (the Lewinsky affair). But Clinton's sense of personal vulnerability also led to a greater humility in foreign affairs, a sense that one had to move slowly and with understanding of others, rather than coming in to new situations with guns blazing and announcing the transformation of the world.

Conclusion

These things help explain to me why Clinton mainained popularity in the Presidency even while furiously attacked by the "right." But the burden of the New Yorker article was to look at Clinton now and in the future. The next essay will turn to that subject.

2095