The Peronista Presidency
By Christopher Hitchens. Mr. Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair and The Nation, is the author of "No One Left To Lie To: The Politics of the Worst Family" (Verso Books, 2000).
The present "legacy" moment has degraded the term to something vague and inchoate, on a par with "destiny" at the upper end and "agenda" at the lower one.
Striving to be heard above the ruffles and flourishes, perhaps I'm not too late to say that a legacy is either something you owned yourself (and thus could not disown) or else it is some cause or issue henceforward inseparable from yourself. As we consider Bill Clinton in this light, and try to distinguish what is unique and peculiar to him from what may be associated with his time in office, we cannot but record some benchmarks. In no special order, historians may choose to note:
* The first presidential candidate to conduct a photo-op execution during the New Hampshire primary.
* The first president to be credibly accused of rape (and to refuse comment on the charge).
* The first president to face proceedings for disbarment.
* The first president to pay money to an aggrieved female former subordinate.
* The first president to be suspected of ordering bomb and missile attacks to save his own "private" face.
* The first president to have franchised the Lincoln bedroom as a means of fund-raising.
* The first president to have defined the Oval Office as private property.
* The first president to have kept another president waiting as he used the above property privately.
* The first president to issue a public apology for something he did not admit to having done.
* The first president to have claimed not to watch his own impeachment hearings.
The above list could be extended indefinitely. The first president, or even human being, to say that he had a climax and she felt nothing, so it wasn't sexŠ.But not even the last repellent fact, not even when combined with point No. 2 above, would inhibit his tireless defenders from saying what a roguish woman-lover (sure, he has his weaknesses) this proved him to be. So one legacy of this person is our cultural resignation -- perhaps better say surrender -- to the triumph of reputation over performance. There is no more shame, even embarrassment, let alone notoriety; only celebrity.
Obviously, much of this irony -- if we still have the right to that word -- comes at the expense of the credulous liberals. The man who coldly executed Rickey Ray Rector is garlanded as an honorary black man by Toni Morrison, and the man who savaged Juanita Broaddrick and defamed several other truth-telling women is fawned upon by Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. Labor leaders embrace the favored son of Tyson Foods. Those who love the downtrodden of the Third World are goggle-eyed at the friend of James Riady. And so on.
Mr. Clinton's debt to the conservatives, and their reciprocal debt to him, is less often remarked and somewhat less a matter for satirists. But I can't easily think of anything George W. Bush and Dick Cheney might want to do that hasn't been made easier and smoother by their predecessor. Be it the transformation of welfare into a work of faith, the construction of a ballistic missile defense system, the extension of the "war" on "drugs," the exemption of the U.S. from international treaties and agreements that may not suit it, the flattering and subsidy of Vladimir Putin or Jiang Zemin, the federalization of capital punishment, or even the preaching of abstinence over contraception to teenagers, they will find -- have already found -- that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton have oiled the slipway.
This leaves us with the overhaul of campaign finance, the right of women to decide on abortions, and the right of one and all to bear arms. These three sure-fire standby arguments were going on eight years ago, were hot-button subjects at Ronald Reagan's first inaugural, and will undoubtedly be going on eight years hence. Ask yourself: Is America more culturally and institutionally conservative than it was eight years ago? There can only be one reply to that, however grudging.
Why, then, is there not a less grudging and more "bipartisan" response from the Republican corner? It's not my job to make this case, but I don't mind making a guess.
The eight years of Clintonism were a demonstration case of the abuse of power. The president took money, in the precincts of our own (not his own) White House, from shady individuals and still doesn't feel that he owes anybody an explanation. He treated members of his staff, some of them apparently compliant but some not, as comfort women. He circumvented his own military and intelligence chiefs to carry out a scandalously contrived bombardment of Khartoum, Sudan, in such a way as to influence his own court calendar. He lied in a blatant and vulgar way to his cabinet, to Congress, to the courts and to a grand jury. He grossly politicized the Department of Justice at which he had once installed his crony Webster Hubbell. He and his lovely wife employed paranoid and McCarthyite rhetoric when confronted with any of the above facts, and have still not offered a word of contrition to those they insulted by doing so.
Perhaps I could compromise (reluctantly) by putting it this way. The Clinton years were a degradation of the idea of a democratic republic. They showed us how far a president can go, in the Peronist direction, if he is lucky with the media and Wall Street and the treasury all at the same time. This ought to be a sobering thought, both for the liberals who thought him one of themselves, and for the conservatives who swallowed their rhetoric and found he was a man with whom they could do business.
On one thing, both Clintonoids and Republicans were incessantly agreed from the first. This was supposed to be the era of personal responsibility. Mr. Clinton must shudder with awed gratitude every time he recalls how hollow that bipartisan promise was, and still is.