Little Willie

February 13, 2001

As all the world well knows by now, the Clintons have departed from the White House by discharging most of their remaining bodily fluids all over that venerable edifice. Like many territorial animals, they seem to think that if they stain an object with those fluids, they acquire ownership of it.

So ends “the most ethical administration in our nation’s history,” as Bill forecast his would be. As for Hillary, she was “the most ethical person I have ever known,” as Bill said in rebuttal to the charge that she was “a congenital liar.”

Their unseemly exit has inspired the greatest crisis of faith since Darwin assailed the book of Genesis. Yesterday’s Clinton apologists have become today’s Clinton-haters. Liberals, feminists, civil rights leaders, pundits, all have been unloading on Bill and Hill.

“Historians heatedly debate who is the best ex-president,” writes Margaret Carlson of Time magazine, “but if Clinton keeps it up, there may soon be no argument over who is the worst.” Until now, Miss Carlson has been a pillar of support for the Clintons, even when Bill was perjuring himself and using all the resources of the executive branch to obstruct justice and slime his investigators. But notice that his presidency still doesn’t upset her; apparently he only went bad, in her eyes, when he became an ex-president.

The New York Times has furrowed its editorial brow over Clinton’s abuse of the pardoning power to absolve cronies and criminals of their sins in return, as it would appear, for political and financial support. How, asks the Times, can this be prevented in the future?

Never mind the future, Grey Lady. It could have been prevented this time. If Clinton had been convicted and removed from office when it became clear to every clam in Chesapeake Bay that he was a criminal, he would have been in no position to keep befouling the presidency. But the Times was among the many enlightened voices who sang in unison that perjury and obstruction didn’t “rise to the level of impeachable offenses” for the man sworn to see that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed.

But the Times, in censuring Clinton, spares itself. This is typical of the new Clinton-haters. Never has a criminal had so many willing accomplices. But now those accomplices are acting innocent as they turn on their sometime Alpha Male. It’s rather as if Tessio, Clemenza, and the boys had sanctimoniously repudiated Don Corleone at his funeral.

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who voted to acquit Bill, has now made the delicate suggestion that he can still be impeached. It may be too late to abridge his presidency, but Bill could still lose his pension and his hefty ex-presidential expense account.

A fetching idea, but it ain’t gonna happen. Maybe a congressional resolution of censure? That wouldn’t require lengthy hearings, wouldn’t “reverse the results of an election” (remember that one?), and wouldn’t allow Bill to pretend that he was “saving the Constitution” if he tried, as a private citizen, to block it. A formal censure would be an unprecedented rebuke for an unprecedented rascal.

There is another possibility. In the age of heroes, people used to write biographies of our great presidents’ formative years, full of legends, not necessarily factual but at least edifying. Little George Washington had chopped down the cherry tree and refused to lie about it. Young Abe Lincoln had walked miles to reimburse a customer he had unintentionally shortchanged. In these incidents young readers could see how the early years of presidents foretold their integrity in high office.

In the same spirit, but a somewhat different vein, how about Little Willie? This would be an account of Bill’s early development in Arkansas. It could recount how he learned to skip school, feign illness, cheat on his homework, charm skeptical teachers, avert punishment, and blame classmates for his little acts of theft and vandalism. It could relate that he was the first boy in the third grade to own a deck of cards with naked women on them, which he concealed by sticking them between the pages of his Bible. And got away with everything.

Such a book might not display scholarly rigor, but it would have the merit of symbolic truth. And who would believe his denials?

Joseph Sobran