Come back, Bill! All is forgiven! - Democratic Underground

Plaid Adder

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Mon Sep-15-03 05:02 PM
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Come back, Bill! All is forgiven!

OK, who here is liking Bill Clinton better since he stopped being president?

I know I am probably in the minority, but while Clinton was in office I was constantly feeling frustrated and let down by him. It started with the gays in the military thing--don't ask, don't tell, don't have a spine and stand up to Sam fucking Nunn--and it just sort of got worse. His bombing Iraq in the middle of Lewinskygate was, for me, the last straw, and I ranted about this at length, in between ranting at length about Ken Starr and the trumped-up witch hunt they organized around the Lewinsky thing:

http://www.plaidder.com/critind.htm

But since he left office, he's starting to sound more like the candidate I had such high hopes for when I voted for him in 1992. It is not an exaggeration to say that when Bill won that election, Liza and I actually experienced a kind of patriotic rebirth. I drove 6 hours to attend his inauguration, even though I was too far away to see anything, and then when I got back I made a cake with a picture of the Capitol on it and we put some candles on it and sang the national anthem to it. We really felt like this was the birth of a much better country.

Maybe our expectations were too high; or maybe, as we always thought, Clinton was too willing to lower his. Maybe the process just inevitably produces weaker politics; or maybe Clinton just didn't stand up to it as well as someone else might have. In any case, thinking about what happened with him does give me pause as I consider the other candidates. It isn't just about what they sound like *now*; it's about what happens after they take office. It is true, as I often say, that a ham sandwich would be an improvement. But since we have the choice, we really ought to try to think about who will, over the long term, be Mr. or Ms. Right, as opposed to Mr. or Ms. Right On, Right Now.

Anyway, this morning NPR played that clip of him telling a wildly enthusiastic audience that if they didn't settle down, he'd start thinking he was president again. Liza said, "Yeah, I wish he *would* come back and declare the Americlintonian Year Zero." And you know what, right now, I would go for that too, because next to what we've had for the past three years, Bill Clinton looks like Albert Einstein, Eugene V. Debs and Abraham Lincoln all rolled into one.

Well, maybe I am not the only person who has learned from the Bush Experience. I'm not saying that the lesson is to move to the center; I still don't think that works. After all, Clinton didn't get himself elected as a centrist, even though he ended up governing that way. But maybe America has figured out, over the past three years, that there are worse things a man can do in office than mess around with an intern. Maybe some of the people who turned on him over Monica are now thinking, "Come back, Bill! Have as many interns as you want! Better to be screwing them than screwing the country!"

If that is what's happening, then it can only be an improvement in terms of the political climate in this country. So maybe, in the end, there will be *some* good that has come out of the Bush presidency: the realization finally penetrating the electorate that sexual morality is not the only kind of morality that matters, and that being a good family man does not make you a good president if it also means that you are a thieving, lying, callous, warmongering, pockets-of-Halliburton-lining sonofabitch.

Look, silver lining,

The Plaid Adder