Back to our favorite subject.... BILL CLINTON! Let's welcome him, folks. Aw, come on, someone clap....
Message 17423221
Peggy Noonan says: Will Clinton Talk?
Nah. He's too lazy, and Hillary won't let him.
PEGGY NOONAN
Will Clinton Talk?
Nah. He's too lazy, and Hillary won't let him.
Friday, May 3, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
"Former President Bill Clinton met with NBC executives Wednesday in Los Angeles to discuss hosting his own
talk show, according to several television sources."--Los Angeles Times, front page, May 2
As befits our subject, I will begin this piece with an assertion of my brilliance. Years ago when asked what I
thought Bill Clinton would do after his presidency, I began answering that he would probably have a TV talk
show called "Here's Bill!" People would always laugh. I would explain that talking is what Bill Clinton does, that
the subject matter of daytime chats would be congenial to him, and that he is a handsome, sunny-seeming and, as
they used to say in the Clinton era, compelling figure. So why not?
His entire presidency seemed like a talk show. Or actually his entire presidency seemed like daytime TV--a talk
show followed by a soap opera followed by a news bulletin followed by another talk show. Sometimes the last
show of the day had the tone of "Washington Week in Review," sometimes "Jerry Springer." Looking back, one
sees that at the end of his presidency Mr. Clinton was like Dave Attell in "Insomniac," the Comedy Central show
in which a charming and apparently aimless man stays up all night looking for company.
So: I was ahead of the curve in saying the talk show would happen. Now I wish to be ahead of the curve in
telling you why it won't. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with the debate on whether he'd be sponsored by
Haines Underwear or The Gap.
The primary reason Bill Clinton won't host a talk show is that Hillary won't let him. She won't let him because she
is not a stupid woman. She doesn't want her husband in a job that would put him back on the media radar
screen on a daily basis. She knows that if he had a TV show he'd wind up in the kind of trouble presidential
spouses aren't supposed to get into. And she intends for him one day to be a president's spouse.
The Clintons are already wealthy. He is raking in tens of millions a year, including a record-breaking $12 million
advance for his memoirs. More to the point, he is wealthy with little effort.
Talk shows take effort. A talk show is real work and not just talk. And Bill Clinton is a talker. Those who
witnessed his presidency up close speak of its iconic moment: the endless bull session, with the president talking
issues every which way and from every angle. Some suggested he did this to fill time while he avoided decisions;
his labor secretary Robert Reich said he thought Mr. Clinton enjoyed talking so much because the sound of it
made him feel like he had real beliefs.
At any rate he loves to talk but not necessarily to work--to decide, to carry through.
Talk shows require discipline. You get up early, have conference calls, hold meetings, read every newspaper and
magazine to stay current. You oversee the tone and topics of the show, prepare for plan interviews, rehearse
skits and bits. You meet with writers, you coddle, dominate, bond with and coolly fire producers. You meet with
the network to discuss the focus-group data that say people think your hair is too thin, and then spend an hour
insisting that you can't start wearing a toupee as you're a woman, or you can't start wearing black leather as
you're a 56-year-old man.
You make the hundreds of personal appearances that boost the show. You manage the charities you've created
or agreed to head because how could you not--you're rich and famous in America. You take care of the band
leader going through a personal crisis and attend the drummer's debut with Paul McCartney's band. This allows
you not only to show solidarity with your colleagues but to get to know Paul, which you must do in part because
it will help to get the exclusive when Ringo dies.
You also do 128 more things, all the while getting the daily ratings that tell you if you're slipping or gaining, which
information will be in the papers tomorrow with your producer's reaction, an amusing one-liner the two of you
just made up on the phone.
Talk shows are not for sissies. They are not for lazy people. Talk shows take actual leadership. And you have to
do them without the power of the government of the United States behind you.
America is a great democratic meritocracy and an odd thing about it is that those at the very top of it, our media
stars in New York and Los Angeles, who have more job security than political figures (Jimmy Carters come and
go, but Tom Brokaw is forever) and are certainly better paid and more famous, actually work like slaves. They
work like staff! Yes, they are wildly compensated, but they don't get enough sleep, they travel all the time, and
half of them say on a semiregular basis, "I hate my life." Because they're always tired. Because they carry great
responsibility. Because they have to prove they're good citizens and show up for the speech, the dinner, the
fund-raiser, or else a gossip columnist will say they're not nice, and the bad publicity will hurt the show, whatever
the show is.
Luckily for them they tend to love movement and action as it keeps them from having to think. But some of them
really do think. And they suffer.
Which gets me back to Mr. Clinton. Not that he'd suffer, just that this would all be too much for him.
Also, Bill Clinton cannot do a talk show because he cannot do the monologue. He cannot do the monologue
because to this day, 17 months after his presidency, the most consistently reliable subject of mirth and merriment
in monologues is Bill Clinton. (Indeed, Mr. Clinton's inability to do a monologue last night became the subject of
a monologue, as Jay Leno joked that the former president "couldn't do a late-night show because he couldn't do
Clinton jokes. You can't do a late-night show without Clinton jokes.")
And Bill Clinton cannot have a talk show because exactly half the guests on talk shows are young actresses who
are beautiful and giggly or soulful and serious. And part of the longstanding talk show tradition is that the host,
the Leno or Letterman, flirts with them, either eagerly or awkwardly or both.
Bill Clinton can't do that because . . . well, back to Hillary.
She knows her husband cannot have a talk show because it would give him a new alternate universe into which
to bring his Billness. It would immediately be a success--early numbers at least would be wonderful. Mr. Clinton
is and always will be a walking talking event. But success would give him the kind of pleasure that in his case is
always the prelude to personal disaster.
He will be so happy he will get into trouble. It will be bad and public trouble. And if he gets into bad and public
trouble, Mrs. Clinton may have to handle it. She would have to consider distancing herself from him even more
than she does. She might have to divorce him to keep the scandal goo on him and not get it all over her. And one
can imagine she does not want to divorce him for many reasons, including that there would be no clear political
gain in it. There would be loss and a rehashing of old finger-waving film clips, and it would get in the way of her
White House bid in 2004 or 2008.
I'll bet the talk show won't happen. Sometimes two people who've had a certain relationship for a long time
experience something big and even painful: a power shift based on a status shift. With her election to the Senate
and her slow subtle emergence as the country's leading Democrat, Mrs. Clinton's career is the dominant one in
the Clinton family, and the one most promising of future dividends.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Her most recent book, "When Character Was
King: A Story of Ronald Reagan," sis published by Viking Penguin. You can buy it here at the OpinionJournal
bookstore. Her column appears Fridays. |
