What We'll Remember

(5 of 5)

Jim Wallis
Evangelical leader
His lasting legacy is his contribution to the cultural discussion on leadership, and I think it's been a negative one. First, he and the White House tried to drive a wedge between personal behavior and public policy, which I think is a fundamental moral and political mistake. It didn't fly, but it damaged the national fabric, and I think it did hurt our kids. Second, he represents the triumph of style over substance, of celebrity over leadership, of success over character.

To me, one defining moment was his welfare reform. Now he's a smart guy; he knows social policy well. He knows everything I could tell him about what would happen to poor kids under his bill. If you had a President who just didn't get it, that's one thing. But his willingness to sign a welfare bill that he knew was high-stakes gambling with the lives and futures of our poorest children showed that the moral compass wasn't there. And that's linked to the other defining moment, dragging us through Monica, which also happened because the moral compass wasn't there. The problem was not having an affair. From a religious point of view, people make mistakes. Jesus was very forgiving of people's mistakes. But he led a yearlong campaign to first of all cover up that he'd made any mistake and lie about it, and then to say, "And if I did, it wouldn't matter," because personal behavior doesn't matter and public policy does. Trying to drive that wedge is the real problem.

Sean Wilentz
Historian
The speech Clinton gave after the Oklahoma City bombing was the rhetorical and spiritual turning point of his Administration. That was where he firmly denounced the antigovernment mood that had so pervaded the country. It was an extraordinarily powerful statement, and in a way it pulled together what had been a rather diffuse rationale for his own political and policy efforts. He was as shaken by the tragedy as the country was, but instead of simply talking about lawlessness, he talked about the larger issue, that you cannot "love your country but despise your government." He put it in the framework of American political argument over the past 20 years in a way that was poignant, moving and powerful.

Remember, he had been trying to reshape the whole landscape of American politics, by revitalizing and reinventing a kind of liberalism that had passed away with Bobby Kennedy. Yet he often hadn't had the words to explain it. But the bombing speech was a moment where, out of the ashes of sorrow and horror, one is reminded of the transcendent political good. Clinton changed the political landscape in a way that makes him the major political figure at the end of the 20th century. And the Oklahoma City speech is where that was most clearly crystallized, not just intellectually but also spiritually.