and elpie, this one's for you.
it's heather mallick's take on
bill's book. she says "bill clinton
was my antidote to hatred".
theglobeandmail.com
Bill Clinton's amazing swing to the write
By HEATHER MALLICK
UPDATED AT 1:08 PM EDT Saturday, Jul 3, 2004
What's it like to be hated, a little boy asked Bill Clinton at the height of his impeachment ordeal. And how did you get through it without losing your mind, others asked him chattily. I presume this was their idea of small talk.
My answer would have been, "It's a compliment to be hated by meanies, Little Jimmy," and to the others, "I didn't get through it, I am completely off my nut. Why do you think I'm wearing an aluminum-foil hat and dipping licorice all-sorts in a bag of ant eggs? Dang, these critters are tasty."
Every one of the millions buying Mr. Clinton's autobiography has a different reason for doing so, but I suspect he'll please most of them with his primer on getting things done in a democratic stalemate. Those who call his presidency a failure even though it encompassed the most sustained economic boom in U.S. history are just wrong. I see it as a garlanded triumph compared to Bushling's deficit-sitting-in-a-bucket-of-blood.
My Life, as a political lesson plan, is one of the best, like a treasure map with a few clues left by a careful pirate. First in His Class, the 1995 biography by David Maraniss, was a good educated guess. Now Mr. Clinton needs is what Lyndon Johnson got with Robert Caro: his own brilliant biographer.
The New York Times calls My Life boring, which is something of a pot saying hi to a black kettle, so Clinton fans will spite them by being riveted. I was fascinated throughout, but then I am easily entertained, especially by tiny local wrinkles in political strategy. How did Mr. Clinton improve education in a state that would rather be rated the dumbest in the country than pay extra for car-licence stickers? It's an accomplishment all right.
I had my own reasons for reading the book, which really should be subtitled à la Jimmy Buffett, "Good Times and Riches and Sonofabitches." I have spent the past year reading U.S. political books (intelligent political coverage there now comes from publishing and the Internet, rather than from newspapers). As a result, I had fallen so deeply out of love with humans as they conducted themselves in the Bushling years that I didn't even trust myself any more. I used to think of awful people as good copy. They made me laugh. Now I wanted them spayed. The American radical right is so vicious and anti-democratic that I had to vaccinate myself against hatred as I read about them.
If I may go into librarian mode, I recommend Joseph E. Stiglitz's The Roaring Nineties for grim economics, Joseph Wilson's The Politics of Truth for the new McCarthyism, Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars for the right-wing conspiracy that Mr. Clinton was the first to label, Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them on why Rupert Murdoch is a reptile, Richard A. Clarke's Against All Enemies on Bushling's contempt for the truth, Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud on a strange coupling, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and to cap it all off, My Life.
Bill Clinton was my antidote to hatred. Although he gives no credit to Kipling's If (". . . being hated don't give way to hating"), he is a happy man today. It seems the great moment was when Hillary said, some months after his Monica Lewinsky confession, that he no longer had to sleep on the couch.
Few Canadians will understand why Americans permitted the radical right's garment-sniffing obsession with Mr. Clinton's sexuality. Of secrets, he writes that "we all have them and I think we're entitled to them." He learned to keep secrets early, living with a violent alcoholic father and going to school pretending no fists had struck his mother that day.
I had always been puzzled by how he could continue to like people so much, even though he dealt daily with racists, criminals, women-haters, the evil and the money-hungry (in Washington, not Arkansas). Bonhomie, the unabashed liking of and everlasting interest in other people, combined with sheer physical energy, is what makes a great politician. Mr. Clinton has it. Jack Layton is Canada's only pol who comes close. From where does it emerge?
It may have been sustained by his affinity for black churches, which emphasize redemption, not punishment. But he was like this from birth. It's a genetic gift, not the false cheer of the salesman, but a true pleasure in the company of others and the ability to see good in everyone. The book would have been half as long, had he left out all the thank-yous, so tedious to the reader, so crucial to the writer.
The phrase that recurs throughout is "because they could" or "because I could." Why did the radical right torment the poor? Because they ran the House and Senate. Why did Mr. Clinton have his moments of intense eroticism with that young woman? Because he could. He was president; she adored him. It was an abuse of power. That he took advantage of it shamed him the most.
It's a phrase to remember.
There are many things we can all do. We know we'll get away with them: Layoffs, cruelties, licking the boots of power, financial shortcuts, small sadisms, the creation of black secrets only we will know. Why did you do it? Because you could. Those "because you coulds" are the greatest temptation for any human. Learning to reject abuse of power, and learning not to hate are the lessons of the Clinton story. |
