The Opinion Column - Page A7
August 19, 1996 BILL CLINTON'S MORTAL PRESIDENCY
by Staff Journalists, The Daily Republican Newspaper
PALO ALTO DESK - The face of a 50 year old Bill Clinton belies a stormy impulsive tantrum. It's not easy being 50 years old and being a president who can't make par on any golf course in the world. It is especially difficult when you have to play by the strict rule: Count all strokes. No Mulligans. In his latest fiasco on Saturday, Clinton hooked a drive from the First Tee into the Jackson Hole Golf Course rough. Rather than taking the 'stroke and distance' penalty, Clinton slipped into his usual habit of 'correcting the record' and taking another try at it. In golf it is a disparaging practice that results in slowing play for all the other golfers on the course. In other words, Mulligans are a despicable form of immaturity. Strict observance of the rules of golf require penalties for errant play. There are no exceptions.
There is no jurisdiction granting 'executive privilege' to a president nor to anyone else on any golf course in the world. The only 'privileges' granted this president are those given him by the virtue of his political connections. The fact that people traveling with the president never smile, wear dark suits, and peer out through dark glasses,and are armed with automatic weapons may have some bearing on the extended courtesy which gives-way before the president's foot-dragging, club-throwing, ball-planting, tree-whacking, and tin cup-begging leadership style.
There are some rules for presidents that they cannot break, however. At the beginning of Bill Clinton's improbable presidency, he started-out with a 'jog' every day. He didn't 'play golf' in those days. But. soon the word leaked-out that the 'joggin' was merely a subterfuge for eluding the First Lady's over-sight for two-to-three hours. Clinton no longer likes 'joggin' and instead, has taken up 'golfin' as a habit.
President Clinton entered the White House at 46, the second-youngest president ever elected. Four years later, there was something immature still apparent in the 50 year old president. White House aides have said that Clinton cannot stay on schedule. That he turns policy meetings into all-day buzz- sessions. Aides say that he does not get enough sleep at night. That he prefers to stay up late on junk food jags. Even as Clinton enters "middle age" they say he refuses to "grow up" and stop tinting his hair to cover the gray. Instead he uses theatrical hair-tinting in preparation for press conferences. Lately, there has been less of streaking and more of the white-tailed mousse frosting.
The variations in Clinton hair color from day to day shows flashes of his impulsive presidential style. For example at that fiasco when Clinton attended the Chicago ethnic food festival in Chicago and had Mrs. Mendoza and her husband arrested for insulting him.
Another shocking example of Clinton inability to control his immature sense of humor happened on national television when he toured the public exhibit of a 500-year-old Peruvian mummy on display at the National Geographic Society and said: 'If I were a single man, I might ask that mummy out. That's a good-looking mummy!'
The hyperactivity of a 50 year old president Clinton is still revealed in his preference for jumping from one idea to another. Recognizing his inability to work consistently he says 'It requires enormous discipline not to be distracted and not to be diverted.' To avoid diversions, advisor George Stephanopoulos has advised him that 'He ... can't speak offhand in a meeting because people will go out and repeat what he said ... He just listens now.'
White House aides have worked tirelessly to conceal the president's peevish and impulsive immaturity and to make him look for like a senior-citizen. The white hair is the tip-off. But Clinton has shifted to suits and ties that present an 'older' or 'wiser' more middle-aged appearance. One White House aide said of Clinton's grand fatherly makeover: "He looks paternal."
The mortal presidency is a preoccupation in the White House during the last four years. Aides are saying that Clinton sometimes tells friends he has been haunted by the fact that his father, William Jefferson Blythe, a traveling salesman, died at the age 28. And there have been an alarming number of deaths associated with the Clinton administration. Several deaths affected the president deeply and reawakened his sense of his own mortality. There have been more than a dozen deaths of former aides to then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton since 1992.
The Clinton's have attended numerous funerals recently. For example one of these was for his mother, Virginia Kelley, who died in January 1994. Then there was his father-in-law, Hugh Rodham. The mysterious death and its aftermath of close personal associate of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was the White House legal counsel, Vincent Foster. Apparently, he committed suicide, though the circumstances and forensic evidence have been questioned.
There was the death of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and a number of military and State officials. Then, after attending a Clinton White House Rose Garden 'peace process' photo-op there was the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the political defeat of Rabin's successor. Press secretary, Mike McCurry said 'Rabin's death was a real gut check to him. He said it reminded him that we don't know how much time we have on this Earth.'
During his term of office, Clinton's aides have reported that he typically 'flew into purple rages when his wishes were not carried out.' Interestingly, he was amazingly tolerant of bad performance, former aides have disclosed.
His message is still that of an out-of-control liberal just as it was in the fall of 1994. American Voters' had turned against Bill and Hillary Clinton by the time of the1994 Congressional elections. The Clinton administration lost Congress. By 1995, Clinton had blamed the Democratic congressional leaders and broke with them. Impulsively, president Clinton called for a balanced federal budget within seven years. Now in August of 1996 Bill Clinton is blaming ambiguous 'extremists' and 'radicals' for his predicament. American voters didn't trust these immature and out-of-control liberals to run the Health Care Express. Voters won't trust them to balance the budget of the United States. Voters won't see the Clinton administration reform the welfare system, as we know it, either. Not then, not now, not ever!
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