A View From Here -- Deb Weiss
A VIEW FROM HERE
by deb weiss
The Nasty Legacy
July 15, 1999
Bill Clinton indulged in one of his favorite pastimes,
speaking in Baltimore yesterday before appreciative
members of the Democratic Leadership Council (and the
press) at a publicity event dubbed, weirdly, a
"national conversation."
He got nasty.
The old schoolyard bully was in rare form, with that
Eddie Haskell hubris invariably induced in him by
bodyguards and a friendly audience.
In a derisive set-piece that combined the trademark
Clintonian snottiness with that mistily corrosive
self-pity that drips like acid rain from so much of
his oratory, he slammed GOP presidential front-runner
George W. Bush and his "compassionate conservatism."
Mr. Clinton led off with a throw-away line that
provided an unnerving glimpse into his own soul-state.
"I shouldn't do this," he smirked, "because it's not
really presidential. But I'm going to do it anyway."
How much of the Clinton presidency is summed up in
that one little phrase.
He continued, in a performance that oozed contempt.
"This compassionate conservatism has a great ring to
it. It sounds so good. And near as I can tell, here's
what it means: It means, I like you . . . and I'd like
not to squander the surplus and, you know, save Social
Security and Medicare for the next generation. I'd
like to raise the minimum wage. I'd like to do these
things. But I can't, and I feel terrible about it."
The crowd roared its approval.
Sure,"compassionate conservatism" is a silly, sleepy,
empty little slogan, and now that Jay Leno has gone to
work on it, Mr. Bush might want to consider quietly
phasing it out.
It certainly hasn't won him many friends -- not at
either end of the spectrum.
Right-wingers reacted to it with a sort of sullen,
mother-in-law dudgeon -- the political equivalent of,
"So! You think we're not compassionate -- and after
all we've done for you!" Then they went home and
refused to answer the phone until George W brought
them flowers and said he was sorry. Even then, some of
them stayed mad.
Meanwhile, those preening paragons, our friends on the
left -- convinced of nothing so much as their own
unassailable virtue, and deeply indignant that the
word "compassionate" should be attached to any object
but themselves -- set up a great shrieking and
squawking, like a rainforest full of irritable macaws.
Mr. Bush's advisors can't altogether be blamed for
hatching the phrase, though. A party that's spent as
many years as the GOP being maligned -- frequently,
with crude injustice and often staggering inaccuracy
-- as a party of granny-bashers, baby-starvers,
racists and all-around devils from hell, does rather
desperately feel the need to fabricate a new image.
It's only natural.
Just as naturally, the president and his friends are
determined to prevent them from doing any such thing.
After all, any triumphs the Democrats enjoy in 2000
will be due almost entirely to their success at
transforming the campaign from a -- well -- "national
conversation," into a melodrama in which moustachioed
conservatives tie pregnant women to railroad tracks,
shoot innocent folk in the back with big, nasty,
unregistered guns, and deny subsidized medical
treatment to plucky tots whose only wish, before they
die, is to testify in piping voices before committees
of Congress.
Mr. Clinton's remarks were designed to illuminate the
melodrama -- to paint a black-ink moustache on George
W's blandly pleasant face.
What they actually illuminated, though, was Mr.
Clinton.
This is a man who has done an adequate job as
president, if one is generous enough to ignore his
foreign policy failures, his personal scandals, and
his disturbingly vindictive temperament.
But "adequate" isn't good enough for him. In the
waning months of his presidency, even as he embarks
with huge and malign cunning on the management of Al
Gore's presidential campaign, he still hungers after
greatness.
He attacks George W for hypothetically squandering a
surplus that he himself is dying to squander (assuming
it even exists) with massive new entitlement programs.
He assails "compassionate conservatism" for its
presumptive failure to save Social Security and
Medicare -- yet it was he who, through a devious
backroom campaign, recently scuttled serious
bipartisan reform so that Democrats would have an
"issue" for Campaign 2000.
In the end, you sense that he simply doesn't know
these things about himself. His own machinations are
opaque to him: he truly believes he can create
surpluses, save entitlements, and leap over tall
buildings in a single bound. And it makes him very
angry when we don't believe it, too.
It's not really presidential. But the man just can't
help himself.
A VIEW FROM HERE archive
All in a Slow News Week... -- July 12, 1999
Traps For The Young -- July 8, 1999
Remembering Michael Dukakis -- July 5, 1999
R.I.P., O.I.C. -- July 1, 1999
Mr. Clinton's Post-War Vengeance -- June 28, 1999
Guns, Cuisinarts and the Bill of Rights -- June 24, 1999
Attack of the Concerned Advocates -- June 21, 1999
FTC Nation -- June 17, 1999
The Very, Very Coincidental World of Bill and Hillary Clinton -- June 14, 1999
Water-boiling in Our Time -- June 10, 1999
Crisis and Peace -- June 7, 1999
Reinventing God -- June 3, 1999
On This Memorial Day -- May 31, 1999
The Un-McCarthy Era -- May 27, 1999
Unspeakable Spin -- May 25, 1999