18 - 24 January 2001
Issue No.517
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 18 - 24 January 2001 Issue No.517 |
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End-games
Bill Clinton is packing his bags and leaving the White House for good. On 20 January he will board the presidential plane Air Force One for the last time and fly to New York, where he and Hillary Clinton bought a house when the First Lady left Washington for New York to start her campaign there for the post of Senator. It will be a highly symbolic, and unnecessary, flight. He could have moved just down the road from the White House to Embassy Row, where a month ago they bought a mansion when Hillary returned to Washington following her election victory. Her defeat of the Republican Rick Lazio by a landslide dispelled the myth that Americans have had enough of the whole Clinton family.
Clinton is leaving Washington, but the Clinton family is staying. In the corridors of power, where 10,000 employees of the Democratic administration are also set to lose their jobs, there is speculation that the Clintons will be back in the White House. Hillary is said to have presidential ambitions. If that is the case, the current president may well find himself back in his old room -- as the new president's spouse.
Liberal America is already overwhelmed with nostalgia for the golden Clinton era, when the stock market broke all records and the economy grew from strength to strength. The liberal media already seem to be missing Clinton. The idea of covering George W Bush for at least four years makes journalists yawn in boredom. The moment he was formally elected, they stopped writing about the longest period of economic growth in US history. Instead, there were suddenly stories on a probable recession.
It is difficult to find anybody outside radical Republican circles that is enthusiastic about Bush. Even moderate Republicans merely comment that "he has put together a great team." The new president lacks charisma, and there's the thorny issue of whether he was or was not legitimately elected. Will a consortium of newspapers and TV networks count the Florida votes not included in the final tally after the final Supreme Court judgement?
Nostalgia may prove to be Bill Clinton's great legacy. While he was filling his bags with drafts of peace accords, lists of the most-wanted war criminals and supremely self-confident State of the Union addresses, a Russian street vendor on Sixth Avenue and 16th street in Manhattan was peddling another legacy. Vladimir sells "babushkas," painted Russian dolls that open to reveal another smaller doll inside, then another smaller one and so on. Usually, the figures are fat old ladies with happy smiles.
When glasnost broke up the old Soviet Union, the images of old women were replaced by those of Gorbachov, Lenin and Stalin. In New York, Vladimir widened the selection with figurines of Elvis Presley, John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe. He's now added Clinton to his list.
"Everybody likes Clinton," he told me, offering a doll of the president in a blue suit and yellow tie that almost became his trademark two years ago. "It's not expensive at $20. Hand-crafted."
He opened the doll and revealed a surprise. From the inner circle there was a doll of Monica Lewinsky. Inside her, Jennifer Flowers was hiding. Inside her was Paula Jones. At the very centre was Hillary Clinton.
Of course, Bill Clinton would like to be remembered as one of the most successful presidents ever. During his tenure, economic indicators broke all records. Unemployment fell to the lowest recorded levels. He helped bring an end to the war in Bosnia, ordered an air campaign to protect the Kosovo Albanians, and personally intervened in the Middle East peace process.
However, the economy is cooling, while flagship dot.com companies are folding one after another. The southern Balkans are under international military supervision, with no permanent solution on the horizon. Clinton was also only the second president to be impeached by the House of Representatives because of his affair with Lewinsky.
Most prominently, the Middle East peace process looks as though it may lead to all-out war. The Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, behind which Clinton put all the weight of American influence to pressure Arafat into capitulation, have produced a sad epilogue, so much more tragic because the presidential rhetoric was so optimistic.
In his final days, Clinton flooded America with an avalanche of presidential decrees that regulated everything from the protection of forest and national parks to human and civic rights. And he keeps on pressuring Arafat, even though the carpet has been puled from under him. He looks like a man who is saying, "If I only had more time." But Bush is moving into the White House with the pledge that the first thing he will do is challenge the decrees Clinton has issued in his last few days in office.
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