What We'll Remember

(3 of 5)

Douglas Brinkley
Historian
Presidents are remembered for their sound bites. Roosevelt had, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you..." Sadly, with Clinton you will have, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." This is a double tragedy. First, he is probably our finest orator as President since Kennedy. He delivered dozens of dazzling speeches. But all of that oratorical emotion and showmanship will dissipate over time, and what will be remembered is the clip of his finger wagging.

Second, he'll always be hostage to the impeachment crisis, like having a scarlet I embroidered on his chest. Clinton may look better to historians when they take a bigger look at the boom time of the 1990s, perhaps the best time to be alive in America ever. He did an excellent job as President; he knew how to prioritize the most important issues of his time, America's debt and the need for balanced budgets. His foreign-policy record is underappreciated. He turned America from a cold war mentality to a globalization mentality. But no matter how well he does in his post-presidency, that moment will never be erased from the national consciousness.

Like Elvis Presley, Bill Clinton will always fascinate us. Both Clinton and Elvis are poor boys who made good; they're both good boys and bad boys at the same time, both pious with a midnight-rambler side. They're both profound and tacky, both perpetual adolescents. When Elvis was performing, the person in the farthest balcony seat thought Elvis was performing directly for him. Go into a large room of people with Bill Clinton, and it seems like he's talking directly at you. It's a kind of rakish charm on overload. There's a disdain for both Clinton and Presley by the East Coast elites, who saw them as backward, Pentecostal hillbillies, when in truth both were very sophisticated at what they do. They will both be forever lampooned, yet real people who understand popular music know why Elvis was a master, and real people who know American politics will think of Clinton as a master.

Wendy Wasserstein
Playwright
I was at a White House dinner, just about two weeks after that first Mideast handshake with Arafat and Rabin. Afterward, Clinton took us out to the terrace to show us where the handshake had been. Then he took us into the Oval Office, showing us John Kennedy's desk and all. You had the sense that this was a guy who loved being President, and not merely for the power of it. It was also for the engagement with the ideas of it, with the possibilities. Then I saw him years later, at a fund raiser right in the middle of the Monica thing, and there was a distance from that exuberance I had seen in the Oval Office, a caution. When I looked at him, I thought back to when he was first elected, and a lawyer friend of mine was so excited: "Finally it's us," our generation; Bill Clinton is us. And I thought, What does this say about us?

Robert Bartley
Editor, Wall Street Journal
The most telling moment of the Clinton presidency was the resignation of Webb Hubbell. This was when it became totally clear that Clinton had sent a crook over to supervise the Justice Department, who was also an old Arkansas hand. It was illuminating about the whole series of corner cuttings and subversions of the justice process that went on from there to the end of the Administration. We always had suspicions that Clinton was corrupt, but I have to say I was surprised by the extent, or the brazenness, of it. And I suspect that as history unfolds, we'll learn even more of the dirty linen.

Robert Reich
Former Secretary of Labor
As we approached the November 1995 showdown over shutting down the government, Newt Gingrich was growing more confident and cockier because he'd already forced Clinton to accept a balanced budget over 10 years, and he was emboldened to escalate his demands to seven years. The government was kept running only through a series of continuing resolutions, and Gingrich and Clinton began to engage in an elaborate game of chicken. There was a real possibility of a serious government shutdown, and the blame could have gone either way.

At this pivotal, high-stakes point, Bill Clinton, through a remarkable set of pirouettes and verbal pyrotechnics, managed, through the press, to firmly attribute the fault to Gingrich and make it stick. Yet it was hard, even from close range, to figure out what his moves were. It was almost as if he was working on many levels at once, engaged in three-dimensional chess, simultaneously weighing and balancing the consequences of various moves, including quite risky and bold moves. He saw his opportunity and figured out how to grab it fast.

This was epigrammatic of Clinton's extraordinary rhetorical ability, his artfulness; also his tactical understanding of both politics and the press, his remarkable sense of timing. It is also emblematic of how the President has functioned when his back has been against the wall. When the times seem to be the worst, he functions the best. He comes up with brilliant ideas, very bold schemes, extraordinary insights. He summons forth from the depths of his very being these superhuman energies. Up until that point Gingrich had all the momentum. After that, Gingrich was on the run. It stopped the right-wing armada, which just a year before had looked unstoppable.