Now We’ll See The Real Clinton

It was midnight in America, and Bill Clinton was dreaming. He saw himself flying from sea to shining sea.

At New York harbor, he looked down at the Statue of Liberty and saw his own face there, his arm raising the torch to welcome huddled masses. He passed over Philadelphia and imagined himself the new Liberty Bell, without cracks, without flaws. In St. Louis, he was the Arch. In the City of Big Shoulders, he was hog butcher to the world.

At Mount Rushmore, he rubbed shoulders with Washington and Lincoln. He was the Grand Canyon, Seattle’s Space Needle, the name stretched across the Hollywood Hills: C-L-I-N-T-O-N.

Bill Clinton is America. He is us.

Now what is he going to do with us?

As the next century and the next millennium loom, this second term must be historic. Presidents traditionally wage war to immortalize their administrations, whether on the mighty beaches of Normandy, the pipsqueak shores of Granada or the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. Men who make war make history.

This time, let it be different. In what will be Clinton’s last office, he could achieve greatness by waging all-out peace and repairing the snags in the fabric of American society.

With no third term ahead, Clinton can take risks. He could solve the nasty immigration problem before us-vs.-them gnaws a hole in our national stomach. He could decriminalize welfare. If he uses the the next four years wisely, America could be as good as Bob Dole remembers it was and as good as Clinton promised it will be. But he will have to tackle the big issues dividing the nation rather than the crumbs he tossed during his campaign - school uniforms, the V-chip.

History will not remember the V-chip. It will remember the president who ends the heartache of racism, an open sore that has been weeping for 300 years, so virulent there is now scientific evidence it saps the health of black Americans. To borrow a plea from candidate Dole, where is the outrage?

Racial divisions are as wide as ever. This was the year of church burnings. This was the year Americans realized the controversy over the O.J. Simpson verdict would not go away as yet another divisive trial began. More than three out of every five hate crimes in America are motivated by race, the FBI says.

When does it end?

And when does discrimination against women end? When will women be equally represented in government and business? When will they be accorded the same respect as men, without fear of abuse or degradation? A prospective juror interviewed for the second Simpson trial said that Nicole Brown was suitably punished for cheating on him. “She was a flirt,” he said. “She deserved it.”

As long as someone somewhere believes women deserve death for disobeying men, America will be a cold climate for half its population. Clinton is president of both genders. It is his noblesse oblige to ensure fairness in a world where, as the Chinese say, women hold up half the sky.

When Clinton ran for president in 1992, he promised one of his first acts would be to guarantee gays a fair shake in the military, that men and women who fight for their country need not fight for their privacy. That promise withered into the puny Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Keep Your Mouth Shut policy that has not served gays well.

America does not serve gays well. Too many people believe that ills such as AIDS are fitting retribution for gays’ presumptive sins. This is not a commendable attitude in a society that needs everyone working together. Divided we fall.

Corporate America, too, is dividing the country between the working and the once-working, the paycheck hoarders and the laid-off. It is the Grim Reaper haunting employees with the message that the only guarantee in today’s workplace is that there are no guarantees. This is what makes Americans nervous about their future, not whether their children will wear uniforms or glimpse flesh on television.

I’m not sure a president can change that. I’m not sure Big Business can hear over the din of profits rising and CEOs’ bonus checks being cashed. Yet if anything can fray the bridge to the next century, it is fear itself, the fear that the bridge ends halfway to tomorrow.

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