Clinton's Last Big Scene

According to Howard Fineman, Newsweek's resident Clinton apologist and synchophant, Bill Clinton is now "beloved" by America. Somehow, in just over four years, Fineman honestly believes this impeached, disgraced, and utterly classless hill-billy has been transformed into America's Pope John Paul.

But puppy love is blinding, and Fineman has never really been able to see the truth about the former president. Discussing Clinton on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" on Wednesday, Fineman acted once again like a smitten school girl, just back from the supermarket with the latest copy of Tiger Beat, and predictably, Matthews was not much better. The only things missing were the pink heart pillows and nail polish.

They, of course, are not alone in the media world. Katie Couric, for starters, has never even tried to disguise the hero-worship, as well as an evident but thoroughly unfathomable sexual attraction to Clinton. During interviews, Couric would lean in so close to Clinton, she might as well have been sitting on his lap, her perky little face frozen in an expression of longing and awe like the gawky freshman dancing with the senior Homecoming king.

Fineman, like all romantics, sees what he wishes to see. During Clinton's disastrous eight years, Fineman never saw failed domestic policies, dangerous international appeasement, or rank administration corruption. He certainly could never bring himself to confront Clinton's dark and creepy personal behavior, or the fact that the Presidency itself was horribly sullied by this Ozark narcissist. Like the brow-beaten victim in an abusive relationship, Fineman was always there to defend Clinton at every opportunity, and deflect the blame to others, usually right-leaning Republicans who just never could see what a great guy Billy really was, or how smart he was, or how he just wanted the best for everybody, after all.

Now, with the passage of a few short years, he believes Clinton has become a "beloved" figure, whose enemies no longer can muster the passion to hate him. "The sense exists, perhaps grows more vivid" writes Fineman, "that Bill Clinton somehow embodies us all". In his myopic little world of New York City and Washington, surrounded by other leftists who have always deluded themselves about Clinton's popularity in the first place, and who see morality as an inconveniance, this may be true. However, it would be hard to say the same thing about many in mainstream America, who work hard every day and in every way to avoid being like Clinton, and see very little redeeming about him.

To appreciate why Fineman has once again missed the point, it is necessary to understand that Clinton's national political life has always been a grand off-Broadway production, heavy on the special effects and light on the character development. His dramatic opening scene, when he emerged young and vibrant from a hick state as a long shot underdog, was met with audience titters of intrigue. Later when he ran an unexpectedly strong middle-ground campaign, most in the audience were not impressed, but those who were gave him a standing ovation and the presidency. As the curtain rose on his first term, with a slowly emerging boom-economy as a result of the last leading man, the audience felt comfortable, but carefully hesitant. As this scene progressed, audience members began to realize that a deeply flawed and pathetic character stood before them. After the intermission, with scandal after scandal playing out on the stage, many in the audience felt disgust, but many felt pangs of sympathy for the antagonist with the pouty lips and ready tear. As the play's climax approached, and the actor's complete moral and ethical corruption were dramatically exposed, most in the audience felt sick and repelled. As the crescendo of impeachment faded away, the audience began to filter out of the grand hall, leaving a shamed and often reviled player standing nearly alone in the spotlight. As his final scene nears, the actor desperately searches the empty seats for anyone who remembers his days of glory and world acclaim, but the audience has abandoned the Arkansan for a Texan.

Today, at this stage in Clinton's performance piece, what Fineman sees is not a warm embracing love, but simply the final audience emotions in Clinton's uninterrupted one-man performance: pity for an actor once energetic and now ragged, once strong and now frail, once powerful and now deathly ill. Clinton, in spite of all the grandiose claims of talent and intellect and charisma, is simply the dying fox caught in the winter trap, bleeding his life inexorably away in near complete isolation.

Fineman is right about one thing. There is really nothing left of Clinton to hate anymore.

Willie J. Caligula is about as 'beloved' as a case of rectal polyps.

well I don't know about the beloved part but I do think his brush with death has mellowed him a bit......he has actually said some very complimentary things about G.W. Bush. Much more than the other Dems....may be politics which he is good at, but I've seen a change none the less....too bad it didnt' come 20 years earlier

Ah shucks....Ol' Bill shared Monica with Bill Richardson and we don't know how many phone numbers Howard received...

Somebody call Ross Perot and tell him we have identified the source of that "great sucking sound" in Washington DC.

I think the Left has always been more willing than the Right to overlook flaws in a person's moral character and unconditionally support them >if< they agree with the person's politics.

It would seem that some on the Left, like Mr. Fineman, would seem to go a bit further and forgive legal transgressions so long as that peron who committed said transgressions supports a woman's right to choose, favors raising taxes and further funding the failed social engineering programs of the New Deal and the Great Society and other such Liberal political positions.

I'd say that it's a great example of a Means justifying the End type of thinking.