Posted on 11/12/2001 12:13:12 AM PST by kattracks
Dear Clinton Presidential Foundation,
It was wholly a pleasure, and surprise, to receive your nice letter, the one that began:
"Throughout the eight years of his presidency, you've been one of President Clinton's most loyal supporters." Well, shucks, I just did the best I could. (At this point picture me shuffling my feet and bowing my head modestly.)
I can't tell you how much I valued the signature on the letter: (ital) James Carville (end ital). Probably about as much as he would value mine, that of another Louisiana boy. While our politics may differ, I've always enjoyed Brother Carville's sense of humor. I haven't heard some of those jokes since Earl K. Long used to campaign on the steps of the Caddo Parish courthouse in Shreveport.
But that was another century, another age. I miss it. Mainly because the frauds, like Jim Crow and Huey Long's promise of Every Man a King, were so transparent. Even a teen-ager could see through them. Back then presidential libraries-cum-shrines were only in their infancy, and their fund-raising letters weren't nearly so frequent. Or obnoxious.
I couldn't help but notice your reference to "President Clinton." I don't want to shock anybody over at the foundation but, well, Bill Clinton isn't president anymore. I realize that the more pretentious insist on using the title long after it applies, but the habit, while common, is not encouraging in a republic. Nor is it in the best of taste, much like leaving the White House with the furniture. Some things we need to leave behind when they are no longer ours. The title of President, like the seal and the rugs, ought to stay the property of Current Occupant, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The purely temporary nature of the distinction suits a republic whose constitution limits presidential terms, and explicitly outlaws titles of nobility.
But there is something in every democratic society that demands autocratic titles. Every county fair has to have its queen, no charity ball is complete without its king, and every homecoming game has to have its court.
It's all in good fun till we start taking the frivolities seriously. Politicians may be the worst offenders; they tend to hold onto the title long after they've left the office. As a kind of memento. As if "Souvenir of Washington, D.C." were stamped on the back.
I used to get other letters like yours -- a mass mailing disguised as a personal communication -- from the Nixon Library. In the course of asking for money, the flack who signed it would inevitably refer to Tricky Dick as "President Nixon."
I pictured the ex-president and his staff sitting around the compound at Yorba Linda as if nothing had changed, much like Bonaparte's guards addressing him as Emperor after his empire had been reduced to a few acres on St. Helena.
Even now the more officious will address Jimmy Carter, who's never put on airs, as "Mr. President."
And former senators seem under the impression that they're entitled not just to the pension but the title. They go on using it long after they've left the office, or had to.
For that matter, governors of Arkansas may hold on to the honorific even if they've been indicted, tried, convicted and chased out of the Mansion.
And now it's "President Clinton." Whatever Bill Clinton now is, including impeached and unconvicted, he ain't president anymore.
Harry Truman had the right idea. He said the highest title in the republic was Citizen, and he seemed happy to reclaim it after having been at the public's beck and call for years. When they asked him what he was going to do when he got back to Independence, he replied: "Unpack."
In America, the highest titles are the simplest, as in Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Truman ... . What use do the truly distinguished have for exalted titles? Their names are more than sufficient.
Only a certain, select category of citizens -- like military and civil officers -- should be addressed by rank or title (like generals and judges) on the ground that they are subject to being recalled to their country's service. Just as someone who has devoted himself to a calling is always Doctor, Father or Maestro.
Otherwise, this profusion of titles offends what Thomas Jefferson was once pleased to call "republican simplicity." But that was long ago, and ostentatious titles now litter the American scene like so many Kentucky Colonels. It happens when a republic becomes a mass democracy.
There was a time, Mr. Jefferson's, when the connection between simplicity and dignity was recognized. And titles, though already in wide circulation, were widely suspect. Like the Duke and Dauphin in Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." We once understood that inflating titles, like inflating the currency, shrinks the value.
But in any society where titles of nobility are officially banned, they will be unofficially bandied about. And once we're all granted this form of social promotion, all titles will be equally meaningless -- like The Honorable before a congressman's name, which long since has become a form of address rather than a description.
Much like plaques on an office wall, the accumulation of honorifics in life tends to be a function mainly of the passage of time. And if the use of superfluous titles continues to spread, American society will start sounding like the cast of characters in a comic opera set in some small but pretentious Mitteleuropean principality. Semi-sincerely,
Captain Dr. Greenberg
©2001 Tribune Media Services
The fun part was not the tear stained letter...the fun part was finding out James Carville is still shilling for Bill Clinton. Haven't you wondered what he was doing these days? And....where's Sidney Blumenthal?
I am expecting a thank you note though. Tick tock, James.
A poor choice of words, Dr. Greenberg, in this post-Lewinsky era. More of Clinton's legacy!
By the way, I also got the Clinton letter. Makes great toilet paper.
But your idea is to die for!! I had similar visions dancing in my head, strolling through the nearly empty building shouting We Want The Sink Emporer! And Where's The Grifter In Chief?! Then listening to the echo. For that I would climb onto a Greyhound bus!
This might be something we should really consider! Let's do it!!! :-)
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