THE
LEGACY
As
he counts down the last days of his second term, we can be assured
that President Clinton's thoughts are now focused exclusively
on the one subject that has preoccupied him since he first took
the oath of office. That is, his place in history.
Apparently,
even back in his first term—long before the scandals that
led to his impeachment and the looming indictment likely to greet
him when he first steps out of the Oval Office a private citizen—Clinton
asked his Faustian media adviser Dick Morris, “Where do I
fit in?”
Supposedly,
the two men assessed most of Clinton's leading predecessors. Whereupon
Morris—displaying the same chutzpah that now allows him to
show his face anywhere in public—told the president, “Borderline
third tier.” Clinton glumly agreed, “I think that's
about right.”
What
Morris had in mind was no doubt those rankings of the presidents,
based originally on Arthur Schlesinger, Sr.'s pollings of his
fellow historians, that used to adorn every American history classroom—back
in the bad old days when we still dared to do anything so reductive,
superficial, and downright fun, as to rate our chief executives
like college football teams. These dusty, framed charts were always
diamond-shaped, with pictures of Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin
Roosevelt up in the “Great” category; Truman, Jackson,
Teddy Roosevelt and maybe a few others in the “Near Greats;”
then a whole bunch in the middle, “Average” group—and
finally, working all the way down a grim-faced Grant and Harding
on the sad, “Failure” level.
William
Henry Harrison, and often James Garfield, would not be ranked
at all, because of their prematurely shortened terms. Nor would
the more recent presidents, usually from John Kennedy onward,
as scrupulous historians decreed that not enough time had passed
for a fair, impartial judgement to be possible.
Fortunately,
most journalists have no such scruples. No doubt you've already
happened upon several assessments of where Bill Clinton ranks
in the presidential pantheon—all likely to be determined
by the commentator's own politics.
To
those on the right, of course, Clinton is a clear “Failure”
—the robust economy, general peace, and falling crime rate
that have characterized most of his time in office notwithstanding.
Since about the beginning of his first inaugural address, Republicans
have been repeating, in truly admirable unison, that the Clinton
administration is “the most corrupt in history.”
Sorry.
But barring any new revelations—always a possibility—the
Clinton administration does not even qualify as the most scandalous
presidency of the past thirty years.
In
sheer dollar terms, the biggest scandal in American history was
the looting of the nation's savings-and-loans that took place
under Reagan—albeit with the assistance of both Republicans
and Democrats in the Congress. Then there was Warren Harding's
administration, which featured the first cabinet member ever sent
to prison, a head of the Veterans' Bureau who had medical supplies
taken literally in one door of a government warehouse and out
another, to be sold on the black market; a postmaster general
who fenced hot Liberty Bonds, and an attorney general who seems
to have escaped the hoosegow only by bribing a juror.
If
we're talking about the subversion of the constitution to political
ends, no scandal in American history quite sinks to the depths
of Watergate, with Richard Nixon using the CIA to thwart an FBI
investigation, and suggesting that his aides burgle the Brookings
Institution. Nor can “Filegate” or the White House travel
office scandal really touch Iran-Contra, in which those zany Reagan
operatives sold arms to one of the world's leading exporters of
terrorism. (Remember the key-shaped cake?) Even when it comes
to personal pecadilloes, Clinton simply does not hold a candle
to Harding, who during the 1920 campaign was juggling not one
but two mistresses—one of whom supposedly became the target
of a piano stool hurled by Mrs. Harding. The other other woman,
seems to have begun her liaison with Harding while she was still
underage, met him for carnal hijinks in public parks, and gave
birth to his illegitimate child while he was in office.
So
having dodged the “Failure” level, who would Clinton
most like to be compared to? Well, the yardstick for most presidents
in the second half of this century has become Franklin Roosevelt,
or maybe Harry Truman, the reigning exemplar of courage in office.
Here
too, though, Clinton falls short. Political careers must always
be in part a matter of circumstances, and to reach the “Great”
or “Near Great” level of presidents, it's imperative
to lead the nation through a war or a depression, or some similar
crisis. Just look at James Monroe, whose two terms in office were
so placid and contented they were labeled “The Era of Good
Feelings.”
Monroe
was re-elected almost unanimously by his countrymen—but rarely
gets out of the “Average” category among historians.
FDR, by contrast, had the good fortune to serve during the most
grueling depression and the bloodiest war in human history. The
Clinton administration just has not been blessed with the sort
of catastrophic developments necessary to prove real leadership.
So just which president does compare most closely to Bill Clinton?
Well, I would opt for what may seem a most unlikely choice: Calvin
Coolidge.
On
a personal level, of course, few men could be more different.
Coolidge was the quintessential New Englander, legendary for his
taciturn, careful nature; the product of a stolid farm family.
Where
Clinton was a political wunderkind, first winning election to
the Arkansas statehouse at the age of 32, Coolidge worked his
way painstakingly up the political ladder, winning an election
every year or two for some two decades. He only attained the presidency
on the untimely death of Harding; had only become vice-president
in the first place because he was mistakenly lavished with praise
for his role in a Boston police strike that he actually bungled.
In
contrast to Clinton's marital foibles, meanwhile, Coolidge seems
to have been a devoted, if domineering husband, a man who insisted
on monitoring his wife's whereabouts at all times—and who,
shortly after they were married, presented her with a bag containing
fifty-two pairs of socks that need mending. (Try that with Hillary
sometime.) So what, then, do Clinton and Coolidge have in common?
The answer lies mostly in the fit between the men and their times.
More than any other presidents of this century, they have both
embraced a vastly diminished role for the governments they have
run—remaining mostly content to celebrate the private energies
and ambitions that have coursed through America in their times.
And
there are some striking similarities between the Americas of Bill
Clinton and Calvin Coolidge. The 1920s were a period of tremendous
technological advancement, which fundamentally altered the way
most people lived. Everything from television and radio, to talking
motion pictures, to commercial air travel and the automobile,
to a whole host of common household appliances, such as the refrigerator,
the vacuum cleaner, the washing machine, were either invented
during the decade or became widely available to middle-class Americans.
Coolidge's
main reaction, like Clinton's to the age of the internet, was
mostly to marvel at what science and business had wrought, and
to get out of the way of future progress. Like Clinton, Coolidge
took office on the heels of a government that had consciously
repudiated years of progressive reforms, and made a point of passing
massive tax cuts for the wealthy. And Coolidge—like Clinton—was
even more faithful to this legacy than its progenitors, keeping
the federal budget nearly flat, and greatly reducing the national
debt.
Under
Coolidge's administration, the peacetime army shriveled away.
He did nothing to police the runaway stock market, or to redress
the grievances of organized labor, largely demolished by big business
soon after World War I. His Justice Department took no real action
against the bold new crime syndicates flourishing under Prohibition.
Again
and again, Silent Cal made clear his view that government had
no place in almost all fields of human endeavor. Facing a wrenching,
nationwide farm depression that had persisted since the end of
World War I, Coolidge only asked rhetorically, “When a man
can't make any money in a business, what does he do?” His
approach to foreign relations was nearly as callous, letting his
secretary of state conclude a meaningless pact that “outlawed”
war while doing little to help Europe through its postwar shambles
or to confront Japan's expansionist impulses in the Far East.
Yet
Coolidge maintained a real idealism toward the modern industrial
world as he saw it. He meant it when he told the Society of American
Newspaper Editors, “the chief business of the American people
is business” ; meant it when he proclaimed that “The
man who builds a factory, builds a temple. And the man who works
there worships there.”
There
is in such statements a sort of rapture that dovetails with nothing
so much as Bill Clinton's reveries about his “bridge to the
twenty-first century.” Much as Clinton's opponents may scoff,
he seems to have meant it, too, when he announced that “The
era of big government is over.”
It
is doubtful that Calvin Coolidge would ever consider our present
government to be small. But it is Clinton, after all, who has
run a sort of modern equivalent of a limited federal government—
balancing the budget, ending the welfare state, and letting any
last dreams of national health care expire.
And
it is Clinton who has reversed a trend of some seventy years,
by overseeing a transfer of power from the nation's political
capital, of Washington, to its financial capital, of New York.
Wall Street has not held such a position of ascendancy in our
country since, well, Calvin Coolidge.
Perhaps
the seismic proportions of this shift alone will induce historians
to bump old Bill up a notch or two on some future, classroom website.
Or maybe not. Within months of his retirement from public life,
after all, the Great Depression had altered forever the future
that Coolidge thought business alone would take care of. By late
1932, with his policies of laissez-faire generally repudiated,
Coolidge admitted, “We are in a new era to which I do not
belong, and it would not be possible for me to adjust to it.”
What
had seemed like prudent, limited government by then looked more
like simply passing the buck. In the years ahead, America would
sorely want for a social safety net and effective law enforcement,
a better balance of power between labor and management, and a
reasonable military deterrent.
It
may be that the bridge to the twenty-first century will also require
some rapid and bewildering adjustments. That building a global
economy—and dealing with global warming—may take more
than a few free-trade agreements. That we will face wars where
significant casualties are a real possibility. And that preserving
human rights and liberties will require a concerted effort by
the people, deciding their destiny through their elected representatives,
instead of just the marketplace, or the internet.
Of
course, if Clinton does find that the new era is not what he anticipated,
don't expect him to admit it. For these days the first thing ex-presidents
tend to is to sit down in their presidential libraries, write
their memoirs, and make their own cases. But Bill Clinton's projected
life after the Oval Office is a subject we'll take up next time.
©
2000 Copyright Forbes Inc.
