The best take on Clinton I've every come across:
Andrew Sullivan February 22, 1998
Almost a tragedy: the nearly
president off to a nearly war
You could almost have written the current Iraq script for
Bill Clinton. It is half-baked, half-coherent, half-begun and
wholly defensible. In fact, the president's recent minor
wobbles on the use of force and the extremely limited war
aims he has posited bring to mind his exquisite position on
the first Gulf war. Back then, Governor Clinton said he
supported the war but agreed with the arguments of those
who opposed it. Try not to laugh.
As president, Clinton has crafted a strategy designed
precisely to reflect that ambivalence. So we have the
possibility of an airstrike on Iraq that will neither remove
Saddam Hussein nor eliminate his potential to develop
weapons of mass destruction, but will temporarily ease a
crisis that palpably must be eased. It's a classic of the
Clinton genre. And one we will reluctantly have to support.
If you were to give this genre a name, it would be the
Nearly Syndrome. Clinton, it seems, is unable to reach a
satisfying conclusion on anything. Ideologically, he is nearly
conservative and nearly liberal. Politically, he is nearly
convincing. Morally, he is nearly repulsive. Legally, he is
nearly guilty. But there is always a gap between principle
and reality, always that sliver of blue sky between a clear
rationale and what he actually does. It is as maddening as it
is fascinating.
It goes back a long way. The young Bill Clinton,
remember, nearly smoked cannabis (he didn't inhale) and
nearly graduated from Oxford (he didn't get a degree). He
nearly opposed the war on Vietnam - remember his
anti-war record in Britain? - but never took a stand in his
own country. He nearly dodged the draft, but found
enough wriggle room to preserve his "political viability". He
married Hillary, but slept with Gennifer. He governed
Arkansas, but wooed Washington. A Southern good ol'
boy, he went to Yale. In each instance he never quite
committed, keeping one small part of himself from any
clear or definitive loyalty. It's something Saddam must now
be counting on in his endgame. I'm not a psychologist, so
the personal meaning of this hazy psychological trajectory
is perhaps best left undissected. Besides, it's not, it seems
to me, necessarily deplorable. Most intelligent people can
see both sides of an issue; and most of us like to keep our
options open as much as we can.
But with Clinton, there is, it might be said, nothing but
options - a constant, endless approximation of nearlyness.
From the beginning of his administration, it was thus.
Clinton was nearly an economic conservative, charting his
fiscal policy according to the dictates of the bond market,
but refused to give up entirely on the minimum wage or the
earned income tax credit. He was nearly a New Democrat,
taking four years to sign welfare reform into law and to
commit to a balanced budget. He promised to guarantee
health insurance for all - and, in five years, he nearly has.
He vowed to let homosexuals serve in the military - and
nearly did. At each critical juncture, he backed away from
a final conclusion, drew back from a definitive policy, and
chose a course of action that satisfied neither his
supporters nor his critics.
In the Lewinsky affair, the syndrome may have reached its
comic apex. This is a man whose final defence, it seems,
will be that he had sex without committing adultery, an oral
version of coitus interruptus that only grammarians and
Jesuits will fully appreciate. But for Clinton it will be a
seamless transition. After all these years, he has surely
learnt how to be nearly adulterous, nearly a harasser, and
nearly impeached. The source of this nearlyness, of course,
is the absence of any guiding moral philosophy, or, for that
matter, of even a smidgen of political daring. In his entire
presidency, Clinton has done nothing but react. The only
exception to this was his early healthcare proposal, but that
is merely the exception that proves the rule. It wasn't his
policy, it was his wife's, a woman who knows what she
wants and is prepared to fight to get it. In fact, if I were
Saddam Hussein, I'd be far more worried right now if
Hillary were president of the United States. She has the
clarity of mind and unswerving aim that her husband clearly
lacks. For if there's any area where Clinton's nearlyism
veers from maddening to dangerous, it's in foreign policy.
In the domestic arena a dose of chronic compromising can
sometimes yield eventual results. But abroad it often leads
to eventual crisis. In foreign affairs it is as important for the
United States, as for any world power, to be clear,
strategic and proactive. Otherwise enemies take the wrong
signal and allies go astray.
Clinton's inability to come to a moral or strategic decision
in Bosnia, for example, bequeathed the world an eventual
genocide and the need for thousands of troops to police a
largely dismembered sovereign state. The fudging of Nato
expansion was also a classic example of Clinton nearlyism
that may turn out to cripple both the focus and the
capability of the European security apparatus.
We are lucky, I suppose, that Clinton has presided over a
period of international peace, but the Iraq crisis indicates
the bigger mess we'd be in if more general turbulence had
been the rule. The Gulf mess is itself a consequence of
Clinton's personal indecision. If the president had had a
coherent Iraq strategy for the past five years - covert,
aggressive support for the Iraqi opposition, rigorous
enforcement of sanctions, aid to Kurdish and Shi'ite
separatists, a gradual tightening of the no-fly zone - he
would have more than merely missile options today. No,
I'm not saying that this crisis is ultimately the fault of the
United States. It is ultimately the fault of Saddam Hussein.
But if Clinton had long ago devised more than nearly a
policy, we would not be now on the brink of nearly a war.
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