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Jewish World Review August 16, 2000 / 15 Menachem-Av, 5760
Chris Matthews
Instead of yielding Al the spotlight this convention eve, Bill and Hill are grabbing all the money and crowd attention they can muster. Saturday, she holds a big fund-raising concert for her New York Senate race. Sunday, he basks at Malibu with Barbra Streisand, as she rakes in $10 million for Clinton's post-presidential library.
So the question lingers in the L.A. air: When is our charmed, politically gifted, sorcerer of a president going to finish with his tricks and let his apprentice get a shot at center stage?
Al Gore has tried giving Clinton the hook. You don't see James Carville and Lanny Davis or Dick Morris in Gore's cast of campaign aides. You do see a vice presidential running mate, Joe Lieberman, who sends a clear message that Gore wants to put the sordid aspects of the Clinton era as far as possible behind him. It was the Connecticut senator who called Clinton's conduct "immoral," saying Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky made fathers like him keep their daughters from watching the evening news anymore.
Preparing to leave for California and the Democratic convention, Bill Clinton has once again raised the Monica story for all to re-examine. In a TV interview in Illinois, he told of his spiritual "rebuilding" and said that "no fair-minded person" would blame Al Gore for his misdeeds.
I expect Clinton's brief moment of public reflection to be forgotten amid the garish celebrations of this weekend. In the company of Cher and Diana Ross and other Hollywood lovelies, the president will take quickly to the role he has sought from youth: that of national prom king. He will take his place in Beverly Hills and Brentwood and Bel Air, not among the great heroes of the history books but at the lip of the dance floor for all to see and admire.
On this point, at least, George W. Bush, had it right in Philadelphia:
"Our current president embodied the potential of a generation -- so many talents, so much charm, such great skill. But in the end, to what end? So much promise to no great purpose."
Alone among politicians, this president seems to actually enjoy fund-raising events like this weekend's. He takes the applause of those who've paid to attend as personal, their friendship as authentic. He talks into the night, I'm told, on this most valuable piece of real estate: the center of this wealthy, successful and glittering group, all eyes and ears alert to whatever he has to share.
I have always reckoned that Santa Monica is this president's spiritual home, and not because of the obvious pun.
Bill Clinton seems most at home not in Hope, Ark., where he was born, nor in Hot Springs, where his mother raised him, but here in the land of confected fantasy, here where the predominant values are youth, sex, money, celebrity, winning.
Here, Bill Clinton does not have to do, but simply to be.
How fitting that his grand parade should end here in Hollywood among the actors, directors and producers who share his lifestyle: pursuing the best-remembered passions of high school with the power and perks of middle
08/07/00: The good soldier
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