This was never more true than last week. If we lived in an even vaguely humane public environment, Dick Morris’s private tragedy would be strictly off-limits: he did it – if, indeed, he did do it – on his own time and, most likely, with his own money. But we live in a public sewer. ““Stories’’ are bought and sold. There are no limits. And trash that appears in Martians-stole-my-baby tabloids morphs, as it moves up the media food chain, into righteous ruminations about the ““character’’ of a president who’d have ““this sort’’ of person advising him. The ruminations, in this case, are stoked by Morris’s own love of intrigue and ambiguity, his own profligate willingness to service all comers. And, once again, Bill Clinton travels with the whiff of the tabloids on him.
But is that a disadvantage? I’m not sure. In his new book, ““The President We Deserve,’’ Martin Walker argues that Clinton’s foibles (and his strengths) are our own. We live in a perpetual baby-boom psychodrama, slightly addled by the options and temptations that affluence has bestowed, mesmerized by the consequences of our indulgences. Dole, clearly, disdains the psychodrama; Clinton embodies it. And the president, clearly, has mixed feelings about that. In a recent interview, Dan Rather noted that the words ““associated with’’ the Dole campaign were Sacrifice, Honor, Trust, Responsibility – and asked the president what words should be associated with his campaign. Clinton hesitated, seemed uncertain, defensive – the Dole words, especially sacrifice and honor, almost seemed a reproach. Finally, he took refuge in his campaign slogans: opportunity, responsibility, ““concern for all Americans.’’ Those were his words. Bill Clinton understands their profound lack of nutritional value – are, inevitably, laundry lists: let me tell you exactly what I’m going to do. A million tutors, 10 million new jobs, 100,000 police officers, 50,000 cellular phones for community-watch groups. It is numbingly pedestrian, but specific – and that may be as close as he can get to trustworthy. It may also be more credible and familiar than anything Bob Dole can offer: ““sacrifice’’ and ““honor’’ haven’t disappeared entirely from baby-boom America, but they’re not as common as they used to be. Which is why both parties made such a big, obvious – and somewhat tawdry – effort to go weepy and inspirational on us at their conventions; which is why we saw so many people in wheelchairs. There is a vestigial longing to identify with real struggle, honor and sacrifice. So we’re offered virtual suffering, virtual inspiration (and virtual human sacrifices, like Dick Morris). We watch the Olympics for ““human drama,’’ not sport. We weep for Superman in a wheelchair. We have replaced actual experience with a sedentary empathy, and that is Bill Clinton’s native ground.
It’s not as harsh a judgment as it sounds. We’ve been lucky. We haven’t had to serve or sacrifice, at least not on the broad, societywide basis that Bob Dole’s generation did. We lack Nazis and bread lines; the threats, if any exist, are more amorphous. And so we don’t need politics as much as they did, at least not right now. We don’t require slogans; this is not a time for bumper stickers or crusades. We live alone, safe and sterile, staring into screens (at home and, increasingly, at work), confined to our couches and cubicles, paralyzed by the velocity and complexity of our lives. We are Superman in a wheelchair.
In such circumstances, leadership becomes a tricky balance between illusion and the appearance of authenticity. It becomes a matter of gestures, rather than actions. So the president amuses us, keeps us occupied, with all his various means of conveyance – trains, planes, buses, helicopters: politics as theme park. More than any other politician, he has understood the balm that images of small-town America can provide (Bob Dole’s small-town Kansas is less illusory, and therefore more dour, and therefore less compelling to a nation of couch potatoes). But Clinton’s appreciation for virtual nostalgia is only a small part of the package. More important is his precise calibration of what the traffic will bear. Some of his advisers, especially the economic populists, worry about the appeal of Bob Dole’s 15 percent tax cut. The president may, too; but he also understands that he could never offer anything so dramatic. ““I think people would rebel against one big idea,’’ George Stephanopoulos said last week. ““Part of what they fear [about Clinton] is that he has too many ideas.’’ And so he offers gestures instead, the appearance of busyness. His proposals are not unworthy – they may well be more responsible than Dole’s wild tax cut –but they could never be confused with anything grand, like a vision, either. And that is all to the good. We have too much to watch, too many visions, as it is.
