All the world's a stage with dollar Bill Clinton (you’ll vomit up things you ate in kindergarten)

Hillary Clinton may be the preferred leader of the free world, but her husband still rules the globe. Michael Gawenda reports.

THERE are few truly magical moments in politics in the United States and in recent times, such moments, rare as they have been, have all involved Bill Clinton. The man whose presidency at the end was mired in a tawdry sex scandal has transcended the bitter divisions of American politics to emerge, in retirement, as the best-loved politician in the country. Perhaps even the world.

Everywhere he goes - and he seems to go everywhere - the Clinton magic is on display.

Take the funeral last week of Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights leader, Martin Luther King. In the vast church auditorium in Atlanta, in front of an audience of more than 6000 people, Clinton stole the show.

From the moment he entered the church behind President George Bush and his wife, Laura, holding hands with Hillary, smiling at his adopted "father", the first President Bush, with a touch of an outstretched hand here, a pat on the shoulder there, love was in the air.

The Republican Party should be thankful that Clinton, having served two terms as president, can't run again, because few doubt that he would be a formidable opponent in 2008.

There were good speeches at the funeral, from President Bush, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Hillary Clinton, who must have known that no matter how good her performance it would be judged mediocre compared with her husband's.

And that's how it turned out. Clinton, unlike Bush, spoke without a prepared speech. He leant forward on the lectern and picked out people in the audience for the Clinton charm treatment, and he said: "We should remember [pause] that there's a woman [pause], a real woman, lying there [pause] not a symbol …"

The standing ovation, the cheering, the weeping lasted for what seemed like ages and, standing beside him, Hillary looked like a woman who had forgiven her husband's many betrayals, she too having succumbed to his special talent for seduction.

Two weeks earlier, at the Davos economic forum, Clinton was the star turn, the man with the answers to all the world's problems, the policy wonk who knew everything about everything, from the challenges of climate change to Iran's nuclear ambitions to the growing wealth gap between rich and poor nations.

A former Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans, the head of the International Crisis Group, said he had never seen a politician like this. "He's the great performer and then he's got the greatest convening power of anyone now in the world," he said. "He has the greatest capacity to articulate things that matter."

Clinton will be in Sydney next Wednesday to articulate the things that matter to those who can afford the reported $2400 it will cost to spend a few hours with the world's greatest politician.

Observers in Washington suggest Clinton's fee for a few days' work in Australia would be about $1 million. This is not to suggest that he is anything but committed to the many causes with which he is involved, from his Third World AIDS initiative to his work with Bush snr, first on Tsunami relief and later on raising funds for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Former presidents have to earn a living and Clinton, who negotiated a $US12 million ($16 million) advance for his recent autobiography and makes several million a year on speaking engagements like the one in Australia, spends a fair slice of his income on his presidential library in Arkansas and his foundation, which is based in Harlem in New York.

Former American presidents are generally afforded an elder statesman status that most former Australian prime ministers would envy. But Clinton at 59, in terms of influence and popularity, is in a class of his own. What's more, because Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party's frontrunner for the 2008 presidential nomination, he remains a major player in American politics.

In the Democratic Party, there is a debate not just about whether or not Bill Clinton will help or harm his wife's presidential prospects, but whether the party needs to more openly embrace the centrist policies of the only real Democratic Party "winner" in recent history. In that context, his ability to transcend the bitter partisan political divide in the US is a singular achievement. Clinton has not resiled from criticising the Bush Administration on a range of issues, from the decision to go for regime change in Iraq to the Administration's inadequate response to Katrina.

On Iraq, Clinton recently told a group of wildly enthusiastic students in Dubai that the US made a "big mistake" when it invaded Iraq. "Saddam is gone and that's a good thing," he said. "But I don't agree with what was done. It was a big mistake."

After Katrina Clinton travelled to New Orleans and hugged everyone in sight, and then more in sorrow than in anger said the political response to the disaster had been "shameful".

Despite all this, George Bush has figuratively - and if the opportunity arose he would undoubtedly do it literally - embraced Clinton. In his State of the Union address a couple of weeks ago, he referred to Clinton as "my father's favourite son" which earnt him his biggest bipartisan round of applause.

One White House official said Bush has genuine affection for Clinton who "is part of a small club of people who understand the pressure any president has to cope with".

When you consider how the Clintons had their marriage analysed and criticised in public, relentlessly and mercilessly, how low rent was Clinton's entanglement with Monica Lewinsky and how despised Hillary Clinton was by most Republicans, their resurrection as a couple and as individual politicians is remarkable.

Hillary Clinton has proved herself to be a canny and substantial senator, who may not have her husband's natural political skills, but who, most observers agree, is hard-working and effective.

Bill Clinton's AIDS foundation has delivered cheap anti-viral drugs to more than 100,000 people in the Third World and last September the Clinton Global Initiative, a three-day conference on world poverty, environmental degradation and religious conflict, attracted world leaders such as Tony Blair and Kofi Annan.

In between, he has managed to work on a campaign to tackle childhood obesity, and with typical Clinton "emotional outreach", as one observer described it, talked on television about his love of hamburgers and junk food which later in life, led to his heart problems.

Clinton has said that he doesn't miss being president, that his life is now dedicated to "causes" and to raising issues that the international community has to tackle as a matter of urgency. Asked recently what had affected him most in the projects with which he has been involved, Clinton said tackling AIDS in the Third World.

"It's, you know, when you look into the eyes of kids that are alive that would be dead if you hadn't gotten them medicine, it doesn't get much better than that."

Despite the fact that the convention at the United Nations is not to appoint a secretary-general from any of the permanent members of the Security Council, speculation continues about the possibility that Clinton will replace Kofi Annan when he steps down at the end of the year.

Bookmakers had made Clinton a 5-2 favorite for the post even though he says that, while he would be honoured if he was nominated, the chances of that happening are "remote" and that anyway, "I have a wife who is a US senator and that would create a conflict of interest."

Bill Clinton was asked recently what it was like to be married to the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination and whether he got nostalgic about his time as president.

"It's pretty … no, it's pretty great," he said. "I like it. I just got back from a brief trip to Europe and I had jet lag and Hillary woke up, so we were awake in the middle of the night talking. And I said, you know, 'I like the fact that you're in and I'm not now. I like supporting you."'

Bill Clinton, the former Walt Disney chief Michael Eisner, the former Hewlett-Packard chairman Carly Fiorina, and the chairman and CEO of ASIMCO Technologies, Jack Perkowski, will speak at The Global Business Forum in Sydney on Wednesday.

"Observers in Washington suggest Clinton's fee for a few days' work in Australia would be about $1 million."

This says it all, doesn't it?

No mention that this man was impeached, that his 8-year neglect of his primary duty as President of the United States, that of defending America and American liberty, allowed known terrorists to build their organization, infiltrate the homeland, and set up cells capable of planning and carrying out numerous attacks on America at home and abroad throughout the tenure of his Presidency--culminating in the deaths of thousands and destruction of two New York City Landmark symbols within view of our Statue of Liberty.

George Washington's Farewell Address warnings were prophetic, indeed. It should be read in its entirety by each citizen on a regular basis; however, the following excerpt may be pertinent here:

"All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

"However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

"Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

"This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

"It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another."

Folks: It took me 10 minutes, but I found the email address to send letters to the editor to reply to this drivel.

The Sydney Morning Herald ought to be reminded that Mr. Clinton may be popular abroad, but that it is precisely because he is so anti-American at home (where he is LOATHED by more than half of American voters).

Additionally they might need a little enlightenment about the sale of nuclerar secrets to China in exchange for $$$$, failure to pursue/confront bin Laden when given the chance to do so, and the myriad other disastrous policy consequences of the 'Toons presidency.

Avoid mention of the 'sex scandal' stuff just to freak them out.

I would compose it myself but I have to run to work - might do it later.

Be polite and informative - don't stoop to the kind of attack than makes it easy to dismiss you as an obsessed 'Toon basher.

Oh, and ....make sure you work in a thanks to the wisdom of the Aussie people who re-elected Conservative Mr. Howard as PM. That will get their (liberal) goat!

Here is the address to send your replies to this POS:

letters@smh.com.au

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