A Presidential Moment For Father And Son

My question to Bill Clinton has entered our family history under the heading of a dad moment.

Positive dad moments, usually occurring when children are under age 13, are times when dad’s presence seems larger than life.

Negative dad moments, ever-more frequent occurences as children grow up, are the strung-together bits of evidence that a father also can be dumb, confused and imperfect.

Forgive me the recounting of a dad’s moment with my son and the president. There is a message here for boys and men of all ages.

The dad moment began with a long flight to Washington, D.C., over spring break with my wife and 11-year-old son. On the last day of our trip, President Clinton addressed a convention of newspaper editors and I had tickets.

My son threw a fit over wearing a sport coat.

The plate of broccoli-stuffed pasta paraded before him didn’t help his mood either.

Finally, the president arrived.

He hobbled along on crutches, thanks to the fall he took a few weeks ago.

The air hung heavy with suspicions that Bill Clinton could be headed for an even bigger fall as a result of turning the Lincoln bedroom into a bed and breakfast for cheesy political fund-raising efforts.

The president rose at the head table and opened a black binder. he began to deliver a major policy statement on chemical weapons. Big. Important. Deadly dull.

My son drank two bottles of Pepsi and displayed a bad case of the wigglies.

The president closed his binder and announced he had time for a few questions. The room rustled with indecision.

Our table sat a few feet from a microphone.

I rose and approached the microphone.

“Mr. President,” I began.

“My son, Cody, age 11, is here with me today and his fifth-grade class will be voting in the presidential elections of 2004. What advice would you give Cody’s class and the other young people of America about what they can do to prepare themselves to be productive citizens early in the next century?”

The president began to nod and smile and gather himself in that way that he does when his mind connects with wistful memories of the time he met JFK, a time before the brutal realities of politics and power had begun to corrupt his dreams.

He cared about chemical weapons, of course. But he felt rising in him a sermon, the voice of a preacher, the words of wisdom to the young.

He turned and looked at my son.

“First and foremost, be a good student,” he began.

There was no hesitation. Not a single m-m-m, or uh.

“Learn all you can. Learn the hard things as well as those that aren’t hard for you. Stay out of trouble. Don’t do something dumb like get involved with drugs or alcohol, or something that will wreck your life.

“Second, get to know people who are your age but different from you. People of a different racial or ethnic group, people of different religions. You are going to live in the most multiethnic, multiracial and multireligious democracy in human history. How we handle that will determine whether the 21st century is also an American century.

“Third, learn as much as you can about the rest of the world because it will be a smaller world and you will need to know more about it.

“And the fourth thing I would say is to start to take the responsibilities of citizenship seriously. Find some way, even at age 11, to be of service in your community, whether it’s helping some student in your school who is not learning as well as he or she should, or doing something on the weekends to help people who are unfortunate. I think we need to build an ethic of citizen service into our young people.”

My son listened with every hair on his head.

He wasn’t thinking about Whitewater just then, or Webster Hubbell, or the Lippo Group.

He was thinking about what the president of the United States had just said to him about what it meant to be a good citizen.

Back home, I got hate mail from someone who saw the president on CNN and wondered why I lofted such a softball when so many Clinton scandals need to be exposed.

The answer is simple. At 11, my son doesn’t need a lesson in political scandals.

He needs inspiration.

He needs guidance from people in authority about what it means to grow up and be a good citizen.

The president of the United States, an imperfect man, had risen briefly to an eloquent place where people desperately wish he could find his footing and remain and where my son imagined presidents always reside.

If Bill Clinton ends up disgraced, impeached or forgotten, well, that will afford another lesson for my son.

It will be the lesson of older men who know the wholeness of a person contains slivers of high character amid shovelfuls of shameful banality, twinges of disappointment with a tincture of inspiration.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the editor of The Spokesman-Review.

In the published text, the last word of the column was deleted.