From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
Clinton From A to Z
From appetites to zaftig, Bill Clinton always went home to Hillary.
This is not a definitive guide to the eight years in which Bill Clinton presided over America from the White House. It is, in fact, a personal and sometimes whimsical catalog of the issues, flavors and personalities (some malefic, some quixotic) that defined the Clinton age.
A is for appetites. Mr. Clinton's years were marked by a voraciousness that was impressive, and often unbecoming. He leaves behind him a litter trail of sexual escapades and shaken women, and is likely to be remembered, in popular mythology, more for his priapic aptitude than for any other dimension.
B is for blacks, who provided Mr. Clinton with a political praetorian guard. He cultivated African-Americans assiduously, and with panache, earning for himself the sobriquet--not without a certain folksy style--of the "first black president of the U.S." Saturday's tedious attempt by the Congressional Black Caucus to challenge the Florida electoral votes was, at heart, a show of loyalty not to the Gore ticket but to Mr. Clinton.
C is for Chelsea, the first daughter, who blossomed in the White House from ugly duckling to swan. With a character quite unlike that of her progenitors, she has not a whit of her father's amorality or her mother's blinding bossiness. Let us give credit where it is due: The Clintons raised a charming child.
D is for Matt Drudge, that indispensable cyber-scamp, who personifies the truth that the best way to fight the mighty is with mischief. If Woodward and Bernstein were the iconic media figures of the Nixon years, Mr. Drudge is the same for the Clinton era.
E is for Elian Gonzalez, whose harrowing tale of survival on the high seas turned into a high-octane nightmare on land. Political actuaries insist that his abduction by federal agents--and Mr. Clinton's willingness to do Fidel Castro's bidding on the subject--cost Al Gore the presidential election in Florida.
F is for fund raising, of which the Clintons never tired, and which was, as practiced by them, a cross between a blood sport and an art form. The Clintons' conversion of the Lincoln Bedroom into a kind of high-stakes Comfort Inn presaged the strategic genius that would result, later, in an $8 million book deal for the first lady.
G is for Gennifer Flowers (see "appetites," above), one of the many big-haired ladies to whom Mr. Clinton came to be linked, and whom he later scorned. She was a cabaret singer in Little Rock, Ark., and might lay claim to the title of the Clinton Dalliance With the Funniest First Name were it not for unsurpassable Lencola Sullivan, a former Miss Arkansas.
H is for Hillary, the most overtly ambitious first lady in the history of the U.S. She stood by her man through each of his moral and political crises, and exacted a senatorial price for that loyalty. The Clinton legacy is as much hers as Mr. Clinton's. In many respects, it is more hers than his.
I is for impeachment, which gave the country many days of intense, and lurid, theater, and which led to outbreaks of apoplexy on both the left and the right. In weathering the storm, the president proved himself to be perhaps the most resilient and brazen politician since Nero.
J is for Janet Reno, who for eight years has provided us with a multipart lesson in how not to be an attorney general. From Waco to Wen Ho Lee, she embodied the maladministration that marked much of the Clinton presidency.
K is for Ken Starr, the independent counsel who nearly brought down the president. Pilloried in the liberal press as a prurient inquisitor who pried too deeply into the president's sex life, he was, in fact, a rather dull and meticulous lawyer who was only doing his job. History will judge him more kindly than did the New York Times.
L is for Joe Lieberman, the Democrat who broke ranks and criticized Mr. Clinton in the runup to the impeachment trial. More a moral showboat than a man of steely principle, he did not, however, vote to remove the president from office. Later, he brought his suffocating brand of piousness to the presidential campaign, running for vice president while leaving his coat draped over his Senate seat--just in case he lost, which he did.
M, of course, is for Monica, the unlikely temptress who turned the president's head. This White House intern introduced the first ever national discourse on thong underwear and was, in the view of many, one of the great tragic figures of our time.
N is for no controlling legal authority.
O is for Osama Bin Laden, who provided a welcome distraction for Mr. Clinton--and provoked an unwelcome delivery of cruise missiles to a Sudanese aspirin factory. Mr. Clinton bombed that factory a few days after admitting on national TV to having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Lying to a grand jury about that affair led to his impeachment.
P is for Paula Jones, Mr. Clinton's quintessential quarry. A former office assistant for the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, she erupted into his first presidential campaign when she claimed that she'd fended off Gov. Clinton's advances in a Little Rock hotel. "It's wrong that a woman can be harassed by a figure that high," she said. "It's humiliating what he did to me." Nine years and a new nose later, she accepted an $850,000 settlement from Mr. Clinton.
Q is for queasy.
R is for responsibility (whether personal, professional or political), which those in the Clinton administration scarcely ever took seriously--or at all.
S is for Susan McDougal, who, with her late husband, James, was a financial partner of the Clintons in Little Rock. She served time in prison for civil contempt after she refused to answer the independent counsel's questions on Whitewater (see below), one of many friends who got hung out to dry by the Clintons. In doing so, she provoked our abiding fascination: Why take the rap for the Clintons? Was it fierce loyalty? Or a fiercer fear?
T is for iced tea, the excessive drinking of which, it was said, forced Al Gore to visit the lavatory moments before a critical discussion of "hard money" at a fundraising meeting. Ms. Reno bought the story, even as the nation guffawed.
U is for uxorious, which Mr. Clinton was, in a funny and compelling sort of way. He wandered with impunity, strayed after women who inflamed his fancy, but he always, always went home to Hillary. And that's the truth.
V is for Vice President Gore, who stood faithfully--even stiffly--by Mr. Clinton for most of his presidency, yet left his side at the very end, only to lose the big prize. Unlike Mr. Clinton, he was a man not of appetites but of hunger. A complex, and complexed, man, he lacked the president's easy charm and craft, as well as his unshakeable self-belief.
W is for Whitewater, a failed Arkansas real estate speculation in which the Clintons were partners. With time, the word came to acquire a metaphoric quality, coming to stand for murk, corruption and the impenetrable darkness of a Clintonian netherworld.
X is for X-rated.
Y is for Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, who first raised for Mr. Clinton a vision of lasting international glory. Their handshake in the Rose Garden gave the president a hubristic taste for the Middle East, a region he is still seeking to "fix" to the very end of his days in office.
Z is for Mr. Clinton's zest for the zaftig. Enough said.
Mr. Varadarajan is deputy editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays.
