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So, finally, you get to be a regular guy. You like your chicken deep-fried, your fries salty, your pizza greasy, your bourbon straight-up, and your cigars smuggled in from Cuba. Heck, you always liked your women plump and sassy. But now you can take long walks with your dog and share a few good lesbian jokes when you're out to dinner with other ex-pols.
You served your country through some hard years -- always choosing duty over material reward. Now it's time to relax and earn millions in speaking fees like other ex-Presidents do. But first the damn Republicans won't let you, and now your porcine brother-in-law Hugh has you deeper than ever in the mud of the pardon pigpen. Your name is Bill, and if truth be told, you're getting kind of teed off.
Funny thing, though, is if anyone can make a silky virtue out of a sow's purse, it's the Man from Hopeless. So put yourself in the ex-President's shoes. Let's think like Bill Clinton for a moment.
DON'T JUST SIT THERE. You're supposed to be retired, out of the limelight. These days you're riding in the back of your regular-guy limo -- an older one, not the state-of-the-art number that those Bush-lovin' Secret Service boys got for George. But you're thinking: Maybe you shouldn't just be sitting like a lump on a plush leather seat. Maybe you should do something about getting pummeled for pardoning some rich dork who was once married to that fox Denise Rich, and who the Israelis kept nudging and nudging and nudging you about.
Return the fire, you tell yourself. You're the Comeback Kid. That's what Dick Morris would be telling you if he were in the back seat with you (though later you would have to ask yourself what kind of person misses Dick Morris).
So you give Geraldo Rivera a live, on-the-air call to complain -- and explain that all you ever wanted to do was sew up peace in the Middle East. If it took the freeing of richy Marc Rich to get Barak and the Israelis to do a deal with Arafat, then you'd damn well turn him loose.
But turning to a tired talk-show host who had defended his fellow social butterfly Denise as politically naive seemed to some like the wrong forum for a pardon defense. Especially since Denise's ex-boyfriend was the fertility doctor who helped the Riveras have a baby.
WELL-KNOWN NAME. Then, as the siren of the SUV leading your convoy down 125th Street was wailing, it hit you. An op-ed piece in The New York Times. You knew The Times would run any op-ed piece as long as it was by somebody famous, and besides Pele, Ali, and Jordan, who has better brand recognition?
Perfecto, you thought. A forcefully argued defense on the Op-Ed -- and you insisted on Sunday so everybody saw it. But that didn't work. Print is always unforgiving, and on Sunday-morning TV, bulldog Tim Russert squeezed your old Chief of Staff, John Podesta, until he all but conceded you had shaded the truth.
Now comes the news that Hugh Rodham, one of Hill's klotzy brothers, made $400,000 by peddling pardons. Could things get worse?
Well, actually, they could. Hugh might have implicated you or his sister Hillary. Let's think about this for a second. Everybody can relate to the relative-from-hell. LBJ had Sam Houston Johnson. Dick Nixon had his brother Donald. Jimmy Carter had his brother Billy. And the Bushies aren't talking because they have George's younger sibling Neil, who got caught up in the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, stashed in a woodshed somewhere.
Yeah, that just might work. Bite your lower lip and get all serious about the pressure you felt from people close to you, people who betrayed you during your last days in office. You might even throw in half-brother Roger, who shagged a pardon and then went out and got shagged for an alleged DUI. It's worth a try, but you probably ought to refine the line. Maybe give Dick Morris a call this time. Geez, maybe you really do miss him.
Scotti, senior editor for government and sports business, offers his views every week in A Not-So-Neutral Corner, only for BW Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
Copyright 2001 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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