Bill Clinton in Vanity Fair

Todd Purdum, Princeton '82, national editor of Vanity Fair magazine, has just given us an article ("The Comback Id") that, under the guise of "fairness" and balance, drips with such vitriol, rancor and sort of cutesy superior "I know what really is going on with Bill"-tone that it makes me wonder not so much what Bill has been doing the last eight years but what Purdum's real agenda is in writing the piece. Its timing (the day before the final Democratic Presidential primaries rather than, say, four months ago or three months from now) seems calculated to capitalize on Hillary's loss to Barack Obama as well as to try to create a "sense of scandal" that still follows Bill. But if you read through Purdum's uninspiring and surprisingly light-weight prose [maybe that is the essence of VF?], you realize that is consists of nothing but a tissue of innuendos, speculation and "gee-whiz" observations about Clinton's post-White House years that, taken together, add up to little more than a drumlin of beans.

Purdum's major point, that Bill runs with a "toxic" crowd, that Bill is "being used" by those with interests in international finance, that Bill has been seen in the company of attractive women, suggest more to me a longing that Purdum or his mag might have to try to become like the Clinton they claim to describe than to have accurately described Clinton's post-Presidency. And, then, to top it all, Purdum's allegation, based on anonymous "sources," that Bill has had a temperamental change since his 2004 heart bypass surgery, a change that has left him "angry all the time," conveniently ignores the reality that almost any passionate Democrat in the past eight years has tons to be angry about with the Administration of George W. Bush. On the last point--I know that a frequent Democratic discussion point from about 2001-2005 was to speculate that Dick Cheney's journey to the "dark side" (he actually was a broadly respected up-and-coming conservative-moderate in the 1970s and early 1980s) was a result of the medication he was consuming for all of his heart ailments. But even people who were Cheney-haters, and there are loads more of them than Clinton-haters, quickly decided that such speculation wasn't worth the energy it took to utter the words. Yet Purdum is willing to rest a large part of his speculative endeavor precisely on this supposed point. The bottom line for Purdum is that Bill's "cavernous narcissism" that has "always driven" him, might at last be "consuming the man almost completely." We are fortunate to have a man of such voyeuristic, sorry, I mean journalistic skill give us a box seat at the self-consumption fest.

Another Model of Bill's Post-Presidency

Instead of looking at Bill's years between 2001-2008 as driven by the troika of jet-set associations, duping by international financiers and a diminished but still evident interest in skirts, one might better divide his last eight years under the following heads: (1) Getting his Bearings; (2) Starting the William J. Clinton Foundation/AIDS Initiative; (3) Facing his own Mortality; (4) Cultivation of Friendships; and (5) Making Money. For the rest of this essay I only want to stress the last one, a quintessentially American pursuit, a pursuit which normally is lauded in press and public life in America.

Consider the following when we think of Clinton and making money (most people know by now that he and Hillary reported combined income of more than $100,000,000 in the past eight years): (A) His long tenure in public service from 1978-2001 meant that the primary source of his money for those years was through the his government salary; (B) When the final story, or at least a more definitive story, of the 1990s is written, it will show that there were more new rich people created in those years than in any comparable period in American history and, in fact, the concept of the "superrich" as a class of people began to be used in that time; (C) The stock market gains in those period were massive; but (D) The personal bills that mounted for the Clinton's in those years were also staggering. Some of them, of course, emerged from Bill's inability to control both his libido and desire for power expressions over women, but the endless search into Whitewater's possible abuses, as well as the misdirected and vengeful Starr report all eventuated in circumstances that reduced the Clinton's to near penury.

I think it was not only natural, but even to be expected that Clinton, in the wake of all these things, would finally want to devote some of his adult life to making money. After all, he was only 54-years old when he left the White House. There was no reason for him to follow the footsteps of perhaps the most interesting post-Presidency (that of Jimmy Carter), since Bill was obviously more comfortable and skillful in the world of entertainers and celebrities. So he did what 95% or more of people would have done in his situation--use his skills, knowledge and connections finally to make some money for himself. He never had the personal experience of wealth, but was increasingly, in the White House, spending most of his time with wealthy people. Why not pursue it then, especially when he was facing all kinds of legal and other bills?

But Purdum reports with the breathlessness of an ingenue that Ron Burkle (Clinton's billionaire CA friend) is perhaps "the single best example of the self-reinforcing network of rich personal, charitable, political and business supporters Clinton has built since his White House years." Huh? Is he describing George Bush Sr. or Bill Clinton? And, if he is describing Clinton, what is so unusual of developing a series of friendships like this? In fact, if you study the lives of Presidents it would be highly unusual if they didn't have such a post-Presidential "network."

Well, I think this is enough to show both my approach to the article and to Clinton. I was an admirer, in many ways, of Clinton's Presidency, especially his interest in trying to position the Democratic party in the modern world in a way that would actually begin to win national elections. Al Gore's loss in 2000 is not to be laid at Clinton's door, I believe; it is more explicable, eight years later, on the supposition that Gore really didn't want to be President. Thus, his self-destruction was perhaps not inadvertent.

Conclusion

The first appearance of Vanity Fair in English literature is in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Here is how John Bunyan describes the town (Vanity) and the fair (Fair) kept there:

"It is kept all the year long. It bears the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where it is kept is lighter that vanity, and also because all that is sold there, or that comes there, is vanity; as is the saying of the Wise, 'All that cometh is vanity,'" chapter 6.

After reading Purdum's piece in the magazine Vanity Fair, I could say that it, like Bunyan's Fair, is a place where what is "kept is lighter than vanity."

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