A Not-So-Fond Adieu to Dear Old Bill

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 27, 2000 | by Jamie Dettmer

Soon we won't have Bill Clinton to kick around anymore. When the new president waves goodbye to the Clintons from the steps of the White House on Inauguration Day and then rushes off to bounce on Lincoln's bed, there's going to be a collective gulp in newsrooms across the United States and an epiphany that life just isn't going to be the same.

Certainly presidential politics will be a lot duller and grayer when the "Comeback Kid" departs to come back no more. Love him or loathe him, Clinton has been a larger-than-life character -- a Mr. Micawber who has muddled through and found that something always turns up to get him off the hook.

What a roller-coaster ride we've had these last eight years, what with finger- and tail-wagging, a Greek chorus of independent counsels, more witnesses disappearing than Eliot Ness mislaid during an entire crime-busting career and the nation held hostage over the meaning of the word "is." Satire has been impossible, confounded by the real thing. Even the TV show The West Wing has been a poor reflection of the drama that has been the Clinton White House.

What will poor Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch do now without the Bill and Hillary Show? How will Newsweek's Michael Isikoff fill his evening hours without all those cable TV programs devoted to the great thong affair? Will Matt Drudge and Lanny Davis disappear, along with the rest of the cast of characters who have had so much for which to thank Bill?

There will be sighs of relief, of course. The first of the baby-boomer presidencies has been a pretty exhausting matter. Left-wing Democrats In the House of Representatives won't have to worry about triangulation anymore and congressional Republicans won't find themselves so naked with someone else modeling their best clothes.

But still there will be a loss of electricity. Unfinished legal business will keep some Clinton-related careers going. Independent Counsel Robert Ray may or may not elect to prosecute the outgoing president. But Klayman no doubt doggedly will pursue the missing White House e-mails. As for Paula Jones, if it is only a matter of money, she probably was right to cash in now and take off her clothes for Penthouse magazine. In a few months it will be "Paula who?"

For Bill it is going to be tough. Just look at him these last few weeks with Hillary in the thick of it in the Senate race in New York and Gore out on the campaign trail. He has been a pale shadow of his formerly entertaining self.

"This man craves crowds more than he does sex," says former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, whose own idea of sex is to have a prostitute suck his toes in a love nest at the (try and satirize this) Jefferson Hotel.

Most of the commentary on the infamous Esquire magazine interview with Clinton has concentrated on the tactless cover shot of the president smirking with his legs splayed, and also on his demand for an impeachment apology from the Republicans. But there is a wistful note in the exchanges with Esquire, suggesting our rakish hero is none too sure about how he is going to cope with the presidential afterlife.

There's always his old Mustang, of course, parked in Arkansas. A road trip across the country would be fun, but spoilsport Hillary probably will put paid to that idea -- so too with a world tour.

Will he get depressed like LBJ? Bill laughed that one off, but with a hint of ruefulness. "Yes, I have this recurring nightmare that for the first four or five months after I leave office, I'll be lost every time I enter a room because nobody will be playing a song. [Laughter.] I won't know where I am."

In the interview he appears to talk up his possible future, pointing to Jimmy Carter as a model: "I now have to get up on the morning of January 21st and make a different life, and I intend to do that. And I hope it will be a good and useful life for me and for my wife and for my daughter and for the things that I care about. I'm actually looking forward to it. It's an interesting challenge and I hope I'll be up to it." The latter clause suggests some anxiety.

So, too, does this: "If I stay healthy, I should have quite a number of years left. I'll be, I think, the youngest president to leave office since Theodore Roosevelt. And he lived [only] another 10 years after because he had some health problems."

But Clinton's real enthusiasm is all about his time in office. "It's exhilarating, it's wonderful. There's never been anything like it, and probably never will be. But, for me, it's been just a joy. Even the bad days were good for me! I've had a wonderful, wonderful time. It's been good for ... a fabulous experience for my family, for my wife and for my daughter, and I'll always be glad I did it. And I'm still working at it. I loved it. I loved it."

All things, bad and good, must come to an end. The very youthfulness of the outgoing president suggests transition will be painful for him.