Thanks, Dubya!
Sunday, January 14, 2001
There he was, President Clinton, playing the sax with a New Hampshire high school band, teasing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and charming audiences on what's been billed as his legacy tour, a farewell swing through the places that have most touched his heart.
But as I listened carefully to him last Thursday in Boston and earlier in the day in Dover, N.H. - places where, Clinton said, he had been ``lifted up'' and nurtured during his grueling 1992 campaign and beyond - a new thought hit me like a bolt: Wait a minute, this guy isn't going anywhere. At least not far.
Even if he isn't president anymore, he means to keep the heat on George W. Bush; to continue pressing for Clintonesque policies, maybe even to be a shadow president, with the new ``Oval Office'' in that $2.8 million manse he and Hillary have bought on Embassy Row.
In Dover - where, in the darkest days of his 1992 sex and draft-dodging scandals, Clinton had promised he'd ``work my heart out for you until the last dog dies'' - the president told a cheering crowd on Thursday: ``The last dog is still barking.''
I'll say. In Boston, at Northeastern University, Clinton talked as much about the future implications of the achievements he bragged about (new technology resources in the schools, more police on the streets, advances in the global economy, huge swaths of public lands spared from developers) than the past.
Clinton can't run again, despite the hard-core followers who chanted, ``FOUR MORE YEARS, FOUR MORE YEARS,'' in Dover and Boston. As Kennedy said jokingly, in introducing Clinton, ``I think the Congress let you down by not repealing the 22nd Amendment,'' which forbids a third term.
But Clinton is still vigorous at age 54. He has installed his friend and top fund-raiser as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee. His outgoing job approval rating is so high (65 percent, better than Eisenhower's or Reagan's when they left office), you'd never know he'd been impeached. And Clinton never could stop thinking about tomorrow.
His signals that he'll be an active ex-president and play some kind of role in public life, were unmistakable:
He talked with pride of the so-called ``Third Way'' that he and party moderates championed; that middle-ground approach that allowed Clinton to part company with his own party's liberals and sign the welfare reform bill (virtually stealing credit for it from the Republicans who wrote it). The third way also preaches debt reduction over the big tax cuts Bush wants.
And Clinton's reaction to his introduction in Dover by Ron Machos Jr. spoke volumes about his post-presidency aims.
Machos (an out-of-work father who couldn't get health insurance for his young son Ronnie's pre-existing heart condition when he told candidate Clinton his story in 1992) said Clinton would write to ``a little boy in New Hampshire who adored him,'' no matter how busy the president got. And Clinton championed legislation banning refusal of insurance for pre-existing conditions. Now Machos is working and his whole family has health care, he said.
Clinton beamed at that. And when he saw young Ronnie's eyes glistening in the audience, the president said, ``Don't cry, Ronnie. I'm just not going to be president anymore. I'll be around.''
The Clinton magic still works. After his speech in Dover, he stayed for 25 minutes, shaking hands with the hundreds of people who had parked blocks away from the town high school and trudged through snow and ice to hear him. On the way out, he circled back to take a saxophone from a band member and play a riff.
In Boston, the line waiting to hear the president speak at Northeastern University's Matthews Arena stretched over several blocks, despite the frigid weather. It was worth the wait.
Clinton and Kennedy played off each other like old friends and veteran pols. U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Somerville) made a partly earthy, partly gracious speech about Clinton that had the president smiling and talking about the up-and-coming young pol.
And, as if that thing with Monica Lewinsky and his impeachment trial in the Senate had been just a bad dream, the president even made a humorous allusion to his having lived on the edge. ``He (Sen. Kennedy) has taken some risks for me,'' said Clinton, adding, with a grin, ``No, I don't mean that. I come from a landlocked state, but he let me sail his boat in Menemsha Harbor'' on Martha's Vineyard.
Clinton, who came to Boston numerous times during his eight years in office to raise money and get resuscitated from his various troubles, said, ``The one place I always knew that would be there to stand with Bill Clinton and Al Gore is Boston, Massachusetts.'' And Kennedy, in turn, expressed his state's love for Clinton. He said, ``We'll leave the lights on for you.''
So come back, Kid. Anytime.
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It's enlightening to compare the words written by Wayne about his hero Clinton and Wayne's words about Dubya, ain't it? ;-)
I ask again: if the Harken story is sooooooo damning, why didn't it come up in the 2000 election? Seems like every other aspect of his life did.