Jones-ing for Willie C.

After another desultory week of watching and listening to amoral Bush and the hoodlums, strongmen, and fixers he has hired to run the country, I hope I can be forgiven for slipping a bit into nostalgia.

I miss Bill Clinton.

There, I said it. I don't miss him so much for specifically political reasons. I miss the person. If I'm going to have to put up with one anyway, I think I'd prefer a president with a real sense of humor over one with a self-interested smirk; I prefer a complicated man with a perhaps fatal taste for the wild side over an overgrown frat boy who had it all handed to him every step of the way.

I dug this up somewhere, and the most interesting thing about it to me is that as late as the summer of 1998, George W. Bush apparently wasn't even on the radar yet as far as the 2000 election goes. Well, it wouldn't be his style to start with everyone else and labor through the whole process of lining himself up as a candidate, would it?. Why do that when you can wait around until your attention wanders in that direction, then call up a bunch of your dad's friends and get them to do the work for you, and pay for it all?

Anyway, from the dustbin:

*****

THE CABLE PIPELINE VOL. I, NO. 30
May 4, 1998

THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY (OR THE LAST TWO-EIGHTHS OF IT)

EVERYBODY'S EVERYTHING. After another dreary week of watching CNN and MSNBC, I am driven once again to comment, against all my better judgment, about the abounding legacy of President Bill Clinton, and all the surrounding hoo-ha thereof.

After watching the aforementioned news networks, and reading this week's Time, which has four consecutive articles in the national news section concerning various aspects and angles of all the investigations going on at this point into the Clinton administration, it occurred to me, once again, that all this was just a bit too much to digest for the average citizen. You know, it seems like the Whitewater investigation (which is still ultimately, after all the tangents and blind alleys he has run down, what Kenneth Starr is supposed to be investigating) began almost as soon as Clinton was sworn in, and here we are, five and a half years and roughly sixty million dollars of public money later, and what do we have to show for it? However one comes down on the question of Kenneth Starr himself, whether one considers him a cheap-jack thug and inept investigator with a hard-on for Bill Clinton, or a human sump pump of taxpayer dollars, or an avenging angel come to rid the country of the single greatest scourge on man since Satan - or, if like most of us, one falls somewhere in between on the question - it is still hard to look around and not wonder just what has been accomplished thus far. What positive results has Kenneth Starr brought us? What started as an investigation into an allegedly shady land deal back in Arkansas way back when, with perhaps (allegedly) peripheral involvement of the President's (then Governor of Arkansas') wife, has mushroomed into what? Webb Hubbell, Vince Foster, David Huaing, Gennifer Flowers, Jim and Susan McDougall, Vernon Jordan, Susan Willey, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Winkin, Blinkin and Nod, and Bullwinkle Moose. And on and on and on.

Starr strikes me as the truest definition in a long time of what a loose cannon really is. The term is a long overused adage by now, and trite, but think of Starr, rolling around wildly on the deck of the ship of state, firing off indiscriminately in whatever direction he happens to be facing at the time, doing irreparable damage in some cases, but with absolutely no regard for that, as long as he gets to keep reading his name in the papers every day, as long as he is assured a spot on the evening news each night, as long as they are holding that plum spot on the faculty of Pepperdine U. for him out in California, with the school financed million-dollar bungalow with the majestic view of the Pacific Ocean. Being a loose cannon is Kenneth Starr's reason for being, actually, and you and I are sanctioning it. Because every dollar Starr has spent so far in the six years he has been investigating the Clintons without coming up with a single indictable offense has been public money. Kenneth Starr's employers, while he has jumped at every hint of impropriety like a bass jumping at a Gig-olo lure and has completely lost his grip on his investigation and himself, are you and I and anyone else left reading down his or her paycheck stub each week or two and seeing the big chunk come out of the middle before one gets to the bottom line of what is "take-home" pay. We pay Kenneth Starr. We employ him; and I for one am ready to say, to continue the angling metaphor for a moment, "Hey, Ken, fish or cut bait. Unless you can come up with something prosecutable in the next three months, you are off the job; and you will have to reimburse us for all the money you wasted along the way indulging your personal distaste for Bill Clinton and his subordinates and friends." Whaddya say, fellow taxpayers? I say we hire a lawyer and start an investigation into Kenneth Starr, and none too soon, either.

Clinton has remained cheery through all this, no doubt at least partly because for some odd reason not even his supporters can really adequately explain (though many pundits, both pro and con, have tried), his poll numbers and popularity have remained high, and even increased in some cases. The conservatives and Clinton-haters are going crazy at this; which almost makes the whole sorry mess worth it to someone like me, who enjoys watching the reactionary Nazi element of the American political spectrum go nuts every time it cannot figure out why the rest of the country will not go along with it's thinking. It is almost as fun as it was watching the left- wing nuts go crazy every time Reagan's numbers went up after he said something particularly ill-advised and patently stupid, which was practically all the time.

I tend to think that, politics aside, Clinton is a lot like Reagan in some, no many ways; and people just liked the both of them, and did not particularly care what all else went on, as long as we did not get steered into some stupid war, and as long as the economy stayed booming. And there you have it. It is tempting to write off the whole mess of Kenneth Starr's administration-long and apparently fruitless investigation as just a low-ball, sleazy (albeit expensive) sideshow to what has otherwise been a pretty great eight years, if you look at it from the narrow view that we have fought no wars and our economy and markets, against long odds, according to a lot of "bears" lurking out there, have just kept booming and booming.

I am personally a little more sanguine about all of this. For what we are reduced to now, and apparently will be for the rest of Clinton's term, is marveling at his ability to again and again face the firing squad of public scrutiny of his most personal and morally ambiguous – to say the least – doings, and to walk away each time unscathed and smiling and more popular than ever before. This is great theater, as they say, but kind of takes us away from the reason why we get together as a country every four years and elect a President in the first place: To get things done, to make changes or to keep things the same, but at any rate to have a vision for where the country is going and to do what is possible to get us there. We do not elect someone to publicly dodge bullets to amuse our most base and prurient interests, which is about the only function Bill Clinton serves nowadays, and it seems all he will do for the next two-and-a-half years, while serving out his lame duck term. And it is a shame. And one cannot blame Kenneth Starr alone for this (although in my personal opinion Mr. Starr deserves to be beaten in the kidneys with sticks, to have lumps pounded on him, and then to be thrown into the bottom of a deep, dark sewer somewhere, left to the fat green flies), or the "moral degeneration" of our society, as it seems to be popular for network commentators to point out lately. Bill Clinton's own dark heart and moral shortcomings are contributing factors to the circus that has now been made of his administration, and why he will never be able to pursue some of his really brighter ideas, like reforming our public health system, or trying to make public education something more than a rat hole we throw money down and a politicized, politically correct mess that has little if anything to do with what should be it's primary focus, educating our children. Because of his personality flaws and peccadilloes, Clinton will not get to do any of this, and because of it, we all lose. And that is the saddest aspect of this whole thing.

And what will the future bring? I mean, what happens after Clinton? I do not think many of the pundits have thought much about this, but I have. Because Clinton has to leave after 2000, regardless, and I for one look at the prospect of a Clinton-less future more or less like a stone junkie dimly views the news on the street that the DEA is about to crack down big time on his neighborhood, and heroin will be extremely hard to come by from now on, and what he does get will be a pale imitation of the stuff from the "good old days." All these Geraldo wannabes and cheap Mike Wallace imitators better brush up their resumes, because once Bill is gone, so too goes the fun.

Think of it. Let's look at our current prospects for the race in 2000. On the democratic side, we have Vice President Al Gore. Earnest, boring, plodding. . .morally a bit shady, we find out, after he was caught fund-raising from his VP desk and (I thought) after he shamelessly used his dead sister as political fodder in his anti-tobacco speech at the 1996 convention. . . but I do not think you will find much sexual contretemps in his past (or present). Dick Gephardt? Well, call me prejudiced, but I never thought a guy with no eyebrows could be much fun (not to mention trusted). Republicans? Newt Gingrich? Give me a break! Lamar Alexander? Pleeease!

Republicans do not have sex, anyway. They are not known for it. They are too interested in policy, I guess. Picture a guy like John Kasich, alone in a darkened room, stroking himself over some position paper on supply-side economics he just read.

Anyway, whatever happens after 2000, no matter who or which side wins, it will be extremely dull as compared to now, and I think all these people who so earnestly want to run Bill Clinton out of the country on a rail ought to think about that a little, before they start constructing little altars to Kenneth Starr in the corners of their living rooms.