#3 Sad to say, we may owe these last eight years to Bill’s charisma.

I’ve decided to number the posts, just to make them easier to refer to if ever necessary. And here’s a brief followup to the previous post (what would have been #2): for a brief discussion of differences between evangelicals and fundamentalists—and of how so many Americans have strong religious beliefs but don’t actually know what they believe—you may be interested to look at Stephen Prothero’s Religious Literacy (San Franciso: HarperCollins, 2007).

And now post #3:
Our older daughter met Bill Clinton four or five times during and after his presidency. In Columbus, he gave a speech that she attended as part of the group that sponsored him at Ohio State, and she shook his hand. She lost an apple at that time to the Secret Service—perhaps because they thought it might have been a Halloween “treat” with a razor “trick”? Who knows what they thought, but she went hungry while she listened. Several years later, she and her a capella group sang at a fundraiser for his Harlem Business Enterprise (or some similar name) on 125th Street in Manhattan, across from Columbia University, shortly after he left office.

He was “the most electric presence” she has ever met, she told me today. When he entered the Harlem fundraiser, “it was like Elvis had just come into the room.”

My niece was a Bill fan in 1992 even before I had remembered him from his longwinded keynote address at the 1988 Dukakis nominating convention. He atoned for that ’88 debacle in his 1992 Democratic convention acceptance speech, by beginning, “As I was saying….” She recognized long before the rest of the family did just how powerful his charisma was, and she was positive that he had the ability to be a great president.

She was right. He did have that ability. He also had “hamartia,” part of Aristotle’s discussion from his Poetics, translated variously as ‘tragic flaw’ or ‘error of judgment.’ Whichever translation we use, it is the tragic element in the personality of a prince that causes him to fall from his high place in the world. We all know what that flaw or error was in BC’s case, and it got him impeached for perjury (but not convicted). It also sidetracked what might have been—should have been—an eight year presidency with tremendously beneficial results for our country. Instead of Bill and his brilliance, we ended up with dubya, “Hyperion to a satyr,” as Hamlet lamented about his father and his uncle.

Voters in 2000 turned to dubya in part (in large part, I believe) because he wasn’t associated with the disgraced Clinton administration, and because dubya promised to unite Americans rather than divide them. He failed, as we know, except in one way: he has united us to an amazing extent against his policies. What is his approval rating hanging at--thirty-two percent? If we remember that, in any given presidential election, forty percent of the electorate will vote Democratic, forty percent will vote Republican, and the candidates are fighting over the remaining twenty percent, it’s clear that a significant part of the Republican base (at least 20% of that base, eight percent of the Republican forty percent) disapproves of the job its own candidate has done.

What’s that? What’s that comment over there? You didn’t know there’d be math? Sorry ‘bout that.

I cannot but believe that, to some extent, Hillary is being punished for her husband’s inability to keep his clothes on his body and his mind on his presidency. Yes, yes, I know it’s not fair, and I believe Hillary would make a fine president. But are folk afraid that Bill would play too significant a role in a Clinton II administration? I relish that prospect, not fear it. They are both extremely bright, even brilliant, people, and the combination of putting their minds together with a strong cabinet and other excellent advisors for the good of the country is exactly what we need after bush-cheney. But I suspect I’m in a small small minority in this belief and this hope. It wouldn't be the first time.