Posted on 10/16/2001 12:01:36 PM PDT by Liz
On top of all the other things I'm obliged to fret about nowadays -- anthrax in my morning mail, suitcase nukes, real pestilence and real plague -- now I find I must worry about Bill Clinton, too.
In case you've forgotten, he was the president of the United States, before and after one Mr. Bush or another. He had all sorts of clever nicknames, hatched and poll-tested for him by whole squadrons of political operatives -- "The Comeback Kid," "The Man from Hope," each sobriquet an eerie blend of Capra and Kafka.
He was cozy with a lot of folks in the press and Academe and Hollywood, and he became famous for having a kind of sex in the Oval Office, although according to official testimony under oath he was pretty sure it wasn't really sex at all.
According to a nice young woman named Meryl Gordon (I feel sure she must be a nice young woman, although, on the other hand, I could be utterly wrong on all counts), writing for "New York Metro," the former president is practically beside himself with angst because he finds that he is out of power at the very moment when events have conspired to create the conditions for greatness.
Like Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront," he coulda been a contender, if only -- if only. (Instead, alas, like Marlon Brando in real life, he finds himself reduced to a bloated irrelevancy.)
Think of the frustration: it must be an especially fiendish kind of torture. What with Americans dead by the thousands, and the nation at war, and mysterious packets of toxins popping up all over the place, and the nation locked in an ominous waiting game, and despite his own best efforts to thrust himself front and center, he really doesn't matter in the least. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.
It is his own pain Mr. Clinton feels now, most deeply and most acutely. He has been robbed -- he seems so sure of this -- of the opportunity to demonstrate his brilliant grasp, his diplomatic genius, his healing touch, his inspired leadership (all those things he never had a chance to flourish before an admiring world during his eight years of unblemished peace and prosperity, from Waco to the Camp David meltdown, from Somalia to the USS Cole).
Poor man. It's an opportunity he is touchingly certain should have been his. It belonged to him by rights, and not to some Texas yokel who's never even been to a Renaissance Weekend or enjoyed an overnight with Barbra Streisand or been hailed as a sex object by left-feminist reporterettes.
According to Ms. Gordon, "The World Trade Center attacks have catapulted the former president -- who was just starting to mellow out and revel in his post-Oval Office life as a New Yorker, senatorial spouse, and money-making private citizen -- into the unfamiliar and frustrating role of action figure in search of action."
The passion of this action figure is tinged with gall, Ms. Gordon notes, with endearing sympathy. "Interviews with nearly a dozen Clinton confidants reveal a man struggling to find a way to be useful and worrying that his peace-and-prosperity presidency will be recast as a footnote to the Bush-family dynasty," she writes, adding, with an almost-audible sigh, "Right after the attacks, Clinton admitted to a friend that he wished, for the first time, to be back in the White House. And he couldn't resist bitterly telling an ally that if the FBI had spent as much time chasing terrorists as it had investigating his behavior, perhaps things would have played out differently."
Mind you, there's a sweet kind of forgetting, in that. (I suppose we must forgive him, though.) The Executive Branch rules the Justice Department, after all, just as the former president -- in theory, at least -- ruled his own appetites. There's a cornucopia of obvious retorts to Mr. Clinton's implication that the FBI robbed him of his Really Big Chance.
Still, it seems excessive (indeed almost cruel) to confront such a man, at such a moment, with anything so blunt and cold as a matter of fact. Here's a curiosity. After eight years of experiencing revulsion and alarm and an often-strident anger at this strange presidential stick-figure, this bizarre combination of noise, and shadow, and lethal vanity, I suddenly feel mostly pity. Weariness and pity.
This is a man who gazes on the corpses of his fellow-beings, his fellow-citizens -- thousands upon thousands of them -- and thinks of how miraculous it would have been, this cosmic horror, this flaring-up of the fires of Hell, if only it had happened in time for him.
This is a man who sees blood and terror and grief and war's devastation merely as a kind of glossy theatrical backdrop, dragged out by the clumsy stagehands of History too late to ornament his turn before the footlights.
This is a soul so small God Himself cannot perceive it without a magnifying glass.
Ohhhhhhh ...now we're talking leagcy here!!!
I still remember the execrable appearance of the candidates Klintoon on CBS' " 60 Minutes."
The lying the outright fraud they perpertrated on the public aided and abetted by CBS.
(Producer Don Hewitt in his new book, admitted he knew they were lying and is just as guilty for allowing it).
I was aghast. I thought who would believe these liars?
A "legacy" that will live in infamy.
Someposts aren fit to read anyway. Want to bet that ontariopcer returns? Clinton was such a failure ,he even put Canada in jepardy.
That last line of the essay just needs to be repeated!
It could have happened Sept. 11, 2000 and Clinton would not, I repeat ,would not have been a legend. One doesn't seek out greatness. You either have it, or you don't. We all know Clinton did not have it.
How very true! HOW VERY TRUE! As on so many other occasions, this was most painfully obvious on the day he left the WH, the day President Bush was inaugurated. There was BC, doing any and everything he could to hold on to the lime light for just ONE MORE moment in time. He couldn't quietly, gracefully, with class and dignity, head off into the sunset. NO! He and the "Itch" (with a B in front) had to stage a ridiculously phoney, fake [political rally] farewell by all at Andrews AFB (followed by his getting on the plane, then getting off in NY, blah, blah, blah...), precisely at the time that President Bush was being sworn in, knowing full well that his puppets in the media would be more than willing to cut in to President Bush's inaugural just to broadcast his phoney farewell. It was at that moment that I truly saw just what a dispicably pitiful creature of a sub-human he had become and I was so thankful that he was president no more. How in the world we survived 8 years of this creature is beyond me. It was a very depressing time for many of us, I'm sure.
I despise him now.
I will despise him until he dies.
And then I will despise his memory."
Perfect!!! And those are the nicest things one could say about the Bent Shrivelled One.
Like you, I was raised to respect certain offices -- like the Mayor of my city, the Governor of my state, and the President of the United States. I can remember my parents telling me that a person stood when a Governor or the President entered a room, and that if you applauded a President with whom you disagreed, you were applauding the Office and not the man.
Had Bill Clinton been a President with whose policies I disagreed (and I did), that would have been one thing.
I still could have respected him. He had, after all, occupied the highest office in our land.
But he actively dishonored the office itself.
He had a young intern give him a blow job in the Oval Office while he was on the telephone discussing troop movements in Bosnia.
He lied to the American People. Worse than that, he attempted to use his powerful intellect to disceive us. He played word games and manipulated the language. I'm sure he thought it was great fun -- having sex in the Oval Office and then showing the rubes how clever he was.
No, Bill Clinton deserves not respect. He deserves unending scorn.
The scorn he deserves is reserved for those who tarnish something that deserves respect.
That, I would guess, is why so many of us conservatives keep the issue of the Clintons alive. It is not simply that we disagrre with their polcies. It is that they actively dishonored something very special to all of us -- The Presidency of the United States.
We won't forget it.
All conservatives (I am one too) need to relax. Where's the respect? He was a American President. Does that count for nothing?
Funny you should mention that.
Where's the respect?
...for the current sitting president and all americans? Traditionally, former presidents "drift into the woodwork" for at least a while after they leave office and intentionally stay out of the way and out of the limelight. Clinton shows his (lack of) respect by staging a huge media event -- complete with rent-a-mob -- to open his Harlem "office". He continues to thrust himself in front of the cooperative, equally as self-absorbed media cameras at every opportunity.
Where's the respect?
...for Americans when their President sells our most sensitive defense secrets to a communist country in exchange for campaign donations?
Where's the respect?
...for the Office of the President, staffed by convicted felons, where the privileges of that Office were constantly and willingly abused through countless self-gratifying, self-protecting executive orders and executive privilege declarations, and where it's occupant engaged in a tryst with a teenage female staff intern.
Where's the respect?
...for the American people who have to listen to their president try to explain why he committed perjury and consistently lied to Americans on the evening news.
Where's the respect?
...when the president forces the American people to bankroll a multi-million dollar investigation into his criminal activity.
And you'd admonish us for being disrespectful? That's laughable!
This is an evil man...He worships at the altar of self..it is all about HIM.He had a perfect marriage..rememeber when Hillary compared the evil terrorists with those that called her names over health care ?
They have no compassion,they have no soul..they give lip service to the pain of others,but they do not have empathy....they are like human clones..
Love Hitlery's "teddy."
Moanica's (sic) there too, the little sucker's always gotta get her face up-front. LOL.!!!
And my, my. From the looks of things, Chelsea musta had implants.
Same goes for Moanica (sic). LOL.
well said, maryjean. that was the most pathetic spectacle i have ever had the misfortune to witness. "klintoon" should have been laughed out of the country!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.