Why We Hate clinton

Why do we hate clinton? No, “hate” is not the word. Loathe? Despise? Abhore? The word, le mot juste, escapes me. It’s a cross between pity and contempt. And regret. And anger. But whatever the specific name of the disapprobation we feel, what is its cause, the etiology of this malady of so large a part of the body politic?

It wasn’t his politics. Politics is about compromise and manipulation, and there can be no complaint that the other side wins when it can. They think they’re right, and they’re not wrong for pursuing their goals, whether or not their ideals are objectively beneficial. Through disagreement we learn who is right.

It wasn’t his lack of integrity. Nothing extraordinary in that, in a politician or in just anyone. Hardly anyone is worthy of his blessings. It wasn’t his draft-dodging or his dishonesty about it -– anyone could see this for what it was, and at most it engendered disdain. It wasn’t his perjury or his obstruction of justice –- cowardice in high office is no surprise. It wasn’t the contempt of court fine he agreed to and paid, not the five-year suspension of his license to practice law. Big deal, right? We disapproved of him long before these things were known.

Not the rampant sexual-harassment charges he faced, or the near-million dollars he paid to settle one such. No. It wasn’t his corruption that made him so disgusting.

Not his proven and disingenuously admitted adulteries, not his betrayal of his family, of those who loved and trusted and depended on him. Not the shame his appetites brought to his wife and daughter. Many men do such things, and need not be “hated” for it. Society has had a traditional role in judging such matters, but the role of social scorn is weak and fading nowadays.

What was it, then?

It was the fact that he was President of the United States. That he was President. That a man who stood for nothing except ambition and a sucking need to be popular, should stand beside the giants who have lead this nation. That a man of such shoddy and mediocre character should represent this nation.

Charm? Certainly. Celerity of intellect? Undeniably. Likeable? I watched him on Charley Rose, and I wanted to like him. Such a waste of gifts. True potential for greatness, stuffed into such a small man. He was the funhouse mirror image of what a president should be – a dwarf who seemed large, a fool who seemed wise, a frog in a prince’s office.

It was never his politics. For all that Carter was the worst president of the last century -- the Buchanan of the 1900s -- he still isn’t despised like clinton. To find an equivalent, we must look to Nixon. If, for the sake of argument, we count clinton and Nixon as counterparts in their character flaws, and equal in the contumely their respective adversaries feel toward them, and if we count as equal the lust for power and the power of lust, then there remains, to distinguish between these two presidents, their effect in history.

A complex question. But Nixon has a number of achievements that might be called important ... Russia ("detente"), and Vietnam, ("peace with honor") and China (an opera) ... ending the draft, lowering the voting age ... anyone remember the wage-price freeze? -- devaluing the dollar and going off the gold standard? He was responsible for the 55 miles per hour speed limit. Well, he did raise taxes and impose tariffs and duties -- how ... how clinton-like. What of importance did clinton achieve? Something about taxes happened, I seem dimly to recall. Um ... don't ask don't tell ... uh ... nothing else springs to mind.

We understand, we all do, that heroes fail. It is a disappointment to us, and we are scarred by it. But we expect that the man can grow to fill the office. This happens. Truman comes to mind. We understand that a man’s reach might exceed his grasp. When a man has grasped what he reached for, however, he should strive to be worthy of it. Publicly clutching a big black Bible doesn’t take the place of soul-searching.

So, clinton failed, and he was insincere. But that’s not why we “hated” him. Why, then?

We “hated” clinton for this reason: he used America the way he used women. For himself.


J