Welcome Back Bill

It has been really wonderful to see Bill Clinton back on the national stage recently.  I heard an interiew with him on NPR just after his book was released, and I was shocked to remember what it is like to hear a political figure speak who has all the facts and figures of an issue at hand, who talks about ideas and about books he's read, who admits that he's made mistakes and that there is a possibility he could be wrong.  America has become a dark place in the last few years.  The repressed shadow of the Bush-league lies over us all.  George Bush's recent comments about John Kerry taking two sides of every issue remind us that in the eyes of the neo-cons the worst sin a man can ever commit is to change his mind, to re-think a position, or to admit he was wrong.  These are the zealots who will follow a wrong-headed decision over the cliff and take us all with them rather than cop to a mistake. 
 
Al Gore made a colossal error in 2000 by distancing himself from Bill Clinton.  Imagine Clinton turned lose on George Bush.  The campaign would have been a short, easy tussle.  Imagine Bill Clinton debating George Bush!  Despite scandal, despite mudslinging, despite eight years of obsessive conservative muckraking and multi-million dollar investigations, Clinton retains a stature and integrity that none of the other national politicians seem able to emulate.  Even when he lies Clinton does it in such a human and understandable way -- remember that the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment only took place because Clinton had the guts to testify under oath at a deposition.  George Bush has refused steadfastly to testify under oath anywhere, even in front of the 9-11 commission or to investigators looking into the leaking of a CIA agent’s identity.  In the latter case he even hired a private attorney before he spoke to investigators.  This is the man who has returned honor to the White House?  Let’s get real. 
 
 In terms of character, George Bush is a cartoon and Bill Clinton is Shakespearean.  He is Prince Hal and Falstaff in one person, with more than a touch of Hamlet's impressive intellect.  Literary critic Harold Bloom has written that Shakespeare’s characters "overhear" themselves and therefore are able to change.  This is what we see so beautifully in Bill Clinton.  We see a man who really is confronting his demons on a public stage and growing and deepening before our eyes.  Bush, Ashcroft, Cheney and company don't even seem to be listening to themselves, much less overhearing their own absurdities.  They have no intention of changing.  True, Clinton is the "smartest kid in the class" who often thinks he can get by on half effort because he is brighter and faster than others, and who is frequently right.  Bloom also says, of Hamlet, that the Prince of Denmark is too large a character for the play in which he is cast, that he dwarfs and out stages the plot with the immensity of his personality and intellect.  Clinton provides something of the same effect -- he is too large for the shrunken and attenuated post-Vietnam, post-Watergate presidency of the late 20th early 21st century.  He is too human for the politics of spin and disinformation -- even when the practioners of those dark arts were his own staff.  A man who admits in his memoir that he isn't sure whether he avoided the Vietnam draft out of political conviction or simple fear is on another level altogether than one who's service records were conveniently destroyed by a Pentagon re-filing effort.  
 
Bill Clinton also embodies in the most dramatic way the failure of American politics in our time.  A man of immense gifts carrying the damage of his childhood and the compulsion of his demons in secret because openly seeking help is a death sentence for anyone with political ambitions.  We have created a system in which anyone who has ever openly struggled with serious problems is un-electable.  Which means that the only leaders we get are those who are so repressed and shallow that they have never confronted a personal demon or those who are so good at hiding their flaws -- or whose privileged background and moneyed family allow them to erase the record -- that they appear to have nothing to hide.  This is a recipe for national disaster.  Try to imagine a recovering alcoholic, a person once treated for drug addiction, or for an emotional disorder, seriously running for President.  The campaign would be over before it began.  Now try to imagine the strengths that someone with that background might be able to bring to this position, the hard won knowledge of the importance of honesty, integrity and responsibility -- not to mention the humility. 
 
As Clinton rightly points out, a man Like Abraham Lincoln could never be elected today beause he suffered from lifelong bouts of crippling depression.  We have banished our shadow and it stares back at us from the rest of the world.
 
On July 26th Clinton is scheduled to speak at the Democratic Convention.  I'm planning a house party to celebrate his return. 
 
Welcome back, Bill.