Ferris Bueller in Exile
November 29, 2001
One of the
remarkable side-effects of September 11 is the sudden eclipse of Bill
Clinton. He has gone the way of the Spice Girls. Even the Clinton-haters of
yesteryear have lost interest in him.
Who ever dreamed that this celebrity
president would so soon become a distant memory? Less than a year ago he left
the White House in a final blaze of infamy remember Marc Rich, and all
that? and it seemed he would continue to upstage his successor
indefinitely. Even his decision to establish an office in Harlem was front-page
news. His wifes election to the U.S. Senate promised to keep him in the
limelight. And even after two terms as president, he was still a relatively young
elder statesman. For an ex-president, he appeared to have quite a future.
Yet Clinton left nothing anyone, of any
political persuasion, would call a major achievement. His legacy
was never defined. The most newsworthy event of his presidency was his
impeachment over an unprecedented sexual scandal. His salient personal trait was
flagrant dishonesty.
The 9/11 terrorist attack, moreover, has put
Clintons presidency in a whole new light, and he is being judged by
unexpected new standards. Hawks blame him for negligence in confronting foreign
enemies; doves blame him for making enemies with his sporadic bombings in the
Middle East. Either way, he looks worse in retrospect.
Rush Limbaugh, who feasts on Clintons
sins, talks as if the terrorist attacks themselves were Clintons legacy.
Thats stretching a point, but the gravity of those attacks does make
Clinton seem especially frivolous. We feel he somehow should have seen them
coming. He did nothing to prepare us for the more serious world we now find
ourselves in. He gave us eight years of Ferris Bueller, and now we face Godzilla.
Looking back, its clear that Clinton
missed all the omens: the bombings of the World Trade Center, American
embassies, a military barracks, the USS Cole. Of course most of us also
dismissed these as minor events rather
than portents, but we expect a president, with all the intelligence at his disposal,
to have some special insight. The real world wasnt quite real to Clinton; it
was just a stage on which he could enact his theatrical gestures and bow to the
applause.
For all his shortcomings, George W. Bush
imparts the feeling that the United States is under adult supervision again. He is
the same age as Clinton, and hes another Baby Boomer who avoided
Vietnam, but he seems to take his responsibilities seriously. He lacks
Clintons star quality as well as his political adroitness; but by the same
token he has none of Clintons clever egotism.
Maybe we shouldnt assess presidents
in such terms, but the fact is that we do. We can hardly help it. During
Clintons first year in office, Time magazine ran a memorable
cover story on him as The Incredible Shrinking President. Today he
is the Incredibly Shrunken Ex-President. History has already trivialized him.
And he knows it. He has reportedly said he
wishes fate had presented him with such a challenge as Bush is confronting. He
must be the only American who wishes it.
Clinton hoped to be remembered as a Great
President. So do they all, but its typical of him to see the 9/11 attacks as
an opportunity for personal glory just another theatrical moment, in which
someone else has unfortunately been cast in the leading role, depriving Clinton of
the chance to play Churchill or Roosevelt. He naturally assumes he would have
risen to the occasion.
The truth is that Clinton lacked the one
quality for which Churchill and Roosevelt are remembered, rightly or wrongly, as
great statesmen: the ability to speak memorably. He was always glib, but never
eloquent. He could justify himself plausibly; he could never stir the blood. Contrary
to Senator Bob Kerrey, Clinton was not a very good liar. Very good
liars are never known to their contemporaries as liars. Clinton was a liar who
pressed his luck far too often. The truly great liars are those whose lies survive
them, to be memorized by schoolchildren.
There isnt much justice in this sorry
world, but its some consolation that Clintons reputation is doomed
to keep dwindling. The rest of his life will be a sort of exile.
Joseph Sobran
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