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I don't know if any citizenry in American history has ever looked upon its leader with so uncomfortable a mixture of contempt, sympathy and hope. I have no idea how people felt about Andrew Johnson during his impeachment hearings, but I can clearly remember that with the house of Nixon one could not wait to see the boards, joists, nails, lintels--everything--hauled away in trucks so that the country could get to the task of making a clean new place to live.
In Clinton's case, most people, myself included, do not want to see him torn down, though few doubt that without lessons in home safety he will continue to set fires that others will have to put out. The confounding, unnerving, exasperating thought is that the structure as it stands is such a waste of good materials, and that it seems blind to its own haunting appearance, besides.
Today, as Halloween approached, I decided to pull off the highway and walk to the house. Up close, it looked much the way it looks from the road--that discomfiting combination of construction and destruction. If anything, it appeared more melancholy, with its screen door hanging tipsy off one hinge, and the chipped latticework at the side, originally for roses, and an electric meter with its dials stopped cold. At the far end, where the kitchen was gutted, someone had shoved together an enormous pile of sheet metal, tarpaper, wire and smashed glass.
I looked at the absent doors, and the places where the walls had been and the charred fireplace that remains intact, and I thought, What a mess. Yet anyone could see that this was once a beautiful house.