The shortest good-bye: Clinton makes his farewell brief and substantive
Balance the budget — "America must maintain our record of fiscal responsibility." Stay engaged abroad, especially with the world's poor — "This global gap requires more than compassion. It requires action." And watch out that this melting pot of a nation doesn't boil over.
"In our hearts and in our laws, we must treat all our people with fairness and dignity, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, and regardless of when they arrived in our country, always moving toward the more perfect union of our founders' dreams."
Also a fourth warning, unspoken: Watch your back.
This performer-in-chief, this political superstar who leaves office with higher job approval ratings at 65 percent than when he came in (yet whom more than half of Americans say they will not miss), has shed a hundred tears for the cameras in his eight years in office. But in a tight seven-and-a-half-minute nationally televised thank-you speech to the American people that was, Clinton insisted with an odd redundance, his last speech "from the Oval Office as your president" (will he sneak back in while Bush is in Europe?), the eyes did not moisten. The lip did not quiver. The naked love of politics did not leap from his face as it did during his valedictory in Los Angeles, or during his dozen other farewells this year (he'll be saying good-bye again by radio Saturday only hours before Bush is sworn in).
This man is not going far
"As for me," — and with a 54-year-old ex-president with a restless brain and a surplus of charisma, this was the part we were waiting for — "I'll leave the presidency more idealistic, more full of hope than the day I arrived and more confident than ever that America's best days lie ahead." Question: Was he therefore that deeply cynical when he entered the Oval Office?
"My days in this office are nearly through, but my days of service, I hope, are not. In the years ahead, I will never hold a position higher or a covenant more sacred than that of president of the United States. But there is no title I will wear more proudly than that of citizen."
He stole the "citizen" bit from Jimmy Carter, who then lived up to it. Roaming the globe building houses and talking peace has already been done — is still being done — but no one expects that to keep Clinton off the stage. Author, certainly. Guest speaker, definitely. Citizen of the world? Tony Blair's door is always open. Democratic fund-raiser? Terry McAuliffe will be in touch. Presidential campaign manager? That fourth warning was neatly framed over Clinton's shoulder — a photo of Senator Hillary Clinton, who will be the only employed one next week but is still married to the most powerful Democrat in the free world.
Americans fared well under Clinton, as did all-news channels and late-night talk show hosts, and he spent the first half of his speech thanking them. "You, the American people, have made our passage into the global information age an era of great American renewal." He thanked us for all the things he normally takes full credit for. But the American people mostly watched, and rooted for either the man or his enemies. Clinton turned politics into a the best soap opera in town, and when George W. Bush is done restoring all the honor and dignity the Oval Office has arguably lost these past two terms, the American people may well have nodded off. Clinton is one tough act to follow.
President Bill Clinton may have "defined deviance downward," as Pat Moynihan said, or he may turn out to have defined tolerance upward. But one thing the historians will not argue about is that he raised our expectations of what the president of the United States should do for our eyelids.
And it sounds very much like he's going to keep on doing it.