Well, some legacy is right!! Here is an opinion column and a news article from the London Times on Clinton. He does not seem to be impressing everyone equally well over there, although my personal opinion is that this columnist is a bit harsh on our Billy. Is the Times a very conservative newspaper? It would seem that way!!
March 29 1998
OPINION
Clinton practises the black
arts in Africa
Andrew Sullivan
Sometimes he maddens you. Sometimes he impresses you.
And then sometimes he just plain takes your breath away.
Listen to Bill Clinton in Rwanda express regret for not
doing enough to stop the genocide four years ago: "We in
the United States and the world community did not do as
much as we could have and should have done to try to limit
what occurred," he intoned, with tears apparently in his
eyes. He also cited Bosnia as a similar failure of moral and
political resolve.
For a moment, genuine remorse seemed to set in among
his listeners. Nobody there, it seems, was impolitic enough
to scream: "And who was president back then? And who
was the primary mover in restraining United Nations efforts
to intervene in Rwanda? And who described Bosnia as
another Holocaust and then dithered until it was too late to
stop the worst?"
Oh, never mind, I suppose. Too late now. A few hundred
thousand innocent deaths are regrettable, but on the plus
side, they're great therapy fodder for the world's most
famous baby-boomer. In any case, the images that were
conveyed back home last week, and on CNN around the
world, were all that really mattered: the dancing children;
the kente-cloth robes; the visit to Robben Island; the
clasped hand of Nelson Mandela. It was all designed to
charm and beguile his black American constituency back
home. And it worked.
So even the sacred and sombre issue of genocide turns out
in Clintonland to be grist for retail constituency politics.
And in the endgame of the Clinton presidency, that is all
we can now hope for. Forget buoyant polls for a moment.
Clinton knows, as everyone else does, that they are fragile,
and more to do with the economy than anything. And
forget the president's extraordinary skill (and luck) in
escaping the designs of his enemies. In Washington,
nobody doubts that this presidency, to all intents and
purposes, is now over. The White House is engaged in a
bare-knuckled legal and political fight for survival, and it
will likely be consumed by little else until the primaries of
2000.
Last week, in an under-reported development, Clinton
showed his true plight by playing a genuinely desperate
card: a legal invocation of executive privilege to shield
himself and his aides from grand jury investigation.
The unconstitutional gambit will almost certainly fail in the
Supreme Court, as it did for Nixon. But the constitutional
wrangling could eat up another year. That's the extent to
which Clinton needs to stonewall to keep Kenneth Starr at
arm's length.
In the meantime, his first, and pressing political task is to
pander to his base. The Africa trip was therefore less a feat
of international diplomacy than a simple, crude and urgent
message to American blacks: don't desert me. He needs
them if the polls - his sole remaining asset - are to hold
steady. He must be calculating that if black Americans
didn't desert O J for murdering his wife, they won't desert
the president for cheating on his. As long, that is, as he
pays them attention. Hence the Africa trip: harmless
pageantry, no commitments; great domestic politics.
Ditto Nato expansion. It is far more significant as a sop to
white-ethnic voters in Chicago and the Midwest than as a
genuine strategic decision in global politics. Clinton's idea
of strategy is skipping Burger King for Wendy's. His
foreign policy, like his domestic policy, is all tactics, not
strategy. Which is why it doesn't particularly matter to him
right now whether the Nato deal makes it through the
Senate. Trent Lott, the Republican leader in the Senate,
has, after all, just postponed a decision on it indefinitely.
What matters is the symbolic politics, and the
constituencies it flatters.
The same goes for paying back dues to the International
Monetary Fund and the United Nations. Right now,
funding for both is impaled on the religious right's loopy
insistence that no American dollars go to international
family planning programmes.
Any sane president concerned with international credibility
- and the UN's urgent task in Iraq - would first fight this
insanity, and second, if necessary, compromise on it. But
Clinton, thanks to Monica, has no room for manoeuvre.
He simply cannot afford to alienate the feminist
constituency, which is shoring him up with critical women
voters. So the UN can wait. The same goes for Ireland
and the Middle East. If you think this administration is
going to risk anything to put pressure on either Sinn Fein or
the Likud, then you're unaware of how domestically
vulnerable Clinton now is. He frantically needs Irish votes
for the poll numbers (hence the St Patrick's day photo-op
with Bertie Ahern, the Irish leader); and Al Gore needs
Jewish money for his campaign for the White House in
2000 even more frantically. With a presidency this
vulnerable no core constituency can go untended, whatever
the genuine merits of the diplomacy involved.
I could go on. A higher minimum wage for the trade
unions; and pork-barrel spending for anyone who wants it;
if I were a congressman, I'd be doing my best not to drool.
Clinton's substantive agenda is now hostage to the
Democratic base he needs for popular support, and the
Democratic congressmen (especially on the
impeachment-focused judiciary committee) who will have
to save his neck if the worst happens. He must also do
what he can not to alienate the Republicans too much, for
fear of a Senate backlash come possible impeachment
hearings. His only hope is that this autumn's congressional
elections will go against precedent and elect enough
Democrats to protect him from humiliation. But just as
earnestly, Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich are determined to
make sure that doesn't happen.
Thus endeth, it seems, the Clinton drama. The man who
once promised to transcend traditional Democratic party
politics, to triangulate into post-partisan reform, is now
hostage to Democratic interest-groups and Republican
senators to save his sorry posterior.
Thus are the mighty promises of a new Democrat reduced
to the exigencies of a man who apparently cannot say no to
oral sex. Well, at least a few Rwandans felt his pain.
March 29 1998
WORLD
Sex scandal dogs Clinton
across Africa
by Andrew Malone, Johannesburg
and Matthew Campbell, Washington
THE American leader was about to address South Africa's
parliament and a small band of Muslim protesters, angry
about threats to Iraq, had gathered outside. "One Clinton,
one bullet," they chanted as Bill Clinton's motorcade swept
up to the building. Then they burnt an American flag.
Clinton did not appear to notice. Battered at home by a
sex scandal that has undermined the gravitas of America's
executive office, he was focused on the benefits of an
appearance beside one of the century's most dignified
statesmen.
Clinton grasped Nelson Mandela's hand as if it were a holy
relic, paying tribute to his emergence from Robben Island
prison after 27 years in detention as "one of the true heroic
stories of the 20th century". Yesterday, in a visit equally
rich in symbolism to the black township of Soweto, he laid
a wreath at the memorial to Hector Peterson, the first child
shot dead by police in a 10-month uprising that began in
1976.
"This solemn place commemorates the death of one young
boy - a death that shocked the world about the evils of
apartheid," Clinton told a crowd of dignitaries, including
stalwarts of the ruling African National Congress. "We
remember all who fell, all who suffered, all who died."
But Clinton's references to South Africa as a model of
racial reconciliation appeared aimed largely at his millions
of black television viewers back home.
His earlier acknowledgment that America had been
"wrong" to accept slavery in previous centuries, though
falling short of the apology demanded by some black
militant leaders, was a departure from his official script that
surprised his aides.
Clinton is clutching at anything these days that can shift
attention from "Zippergate". The long-planned visit to
Africa, suddenly a felicitous diversion from the threat of
subpoenas at home, was extended by five days at the
suggestion of his wife Hillary after the scandal erupted over
allegations that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky, a
former White House trainee.
But Clinton's escape will bring him only a temporary
respite. His invocation of executive privilege to shield his
aides from interrogation by Kenneth Starr, the independent
counsel investigating the president, suggests he may be in
deeper trouble than previously realised.
Another "bimbo eruption" last week had Washington
abuzz. Cristy Zercher, 34, a former flight attendant on the
president's 1992 campaign plane, told the Star tabloid that
he stroked her breast on the plane as Hillary slept a few
feet away. "If he had been a passenger on a commercial
plane, he would have been prosecuted and jailed," Zercher
said. She also claimed that he propositioned her "in the
bathroom".
Presidential aides, worn out by questions about Lewinsky,
were only too happy to abandon Washington. But to the
bewilderment of various African hosts, the travelling
American press corps pestered Clinton about his sex life.
For the African press, by contrast, Clinton's allegedly
irrepressible sexual urges were more a matter for
admiration. "Our leaders always have plenty of women,"
said a Ugandan editor. "It shows they are powerful men."
The trip was not without pitfalls for Clinton or the hundreds
of business representatives, government officials and
congressmen who accompanied him.
In Ghana, a crowd had to be beaten back with clubs and
whips when Clinton was nearly engulfed. The president
had to forsake the dubious pleasures of a night in Accra,
the steamy Ghanaian capital, and head for Uganda after
White House officials discovered he had been booked into
a hotel owned by a Libyan businessman.
According to Clinton aides, the president wants to foster
change in Africa and "do some good" in his last three years
in office. While he hailed the dawn of an African
renaissance, however, much of the continent remains
trapped by war, poverty and disease.
The six countries Clinton visited - Senegal, Ghana,
Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa and Botswana - may be
emerging economic models for the rest of the continent.
But this may have to wait until the next millennium. Wars
are raging from southern Sudan to the Democratic
Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).
Many Africans are deeply suspicious of America's
new-found interest. Clinton's insistence that trade, rather
than aid, would be the driving force of his foreign policy
prompted suggestions that America is intent on exploiting
new markets and cheap African labour after the slump in
Asia.
Mandela, at least, will not be dictated to. In the only note
of discord during the trip, he said he would not bow to
American demands to drop traditional allies such as Libya,
Cuba and Iran, telling anyone opposed to this to "go jump
in a pool". Clinton may wish he could say the same to his
critics.
sunday-times.co.uk |
