Immortalizing Dubious Distinctions
Bill Clinton is not adrift. He has been working behind the scenes on a daring, innovative plan.
The consummate pol is engaged in his last campaign - to persuade history he is not Grover Cleveland.
He has surrounded himself with architects, Microsoft futurists and Disney Imagineers, drawing up a design for the Clinton Memorial. Scheduled to open in 2001, this will be the first living memorial with 21st century technology.
He wants it to be far from the Vietnam Memorial and close to the FDR Memorial. He said last week that he and FDR had both led the country out of “drift and division and deadlock,” and presided over “a period of profound change.” Of course, Roosevelt’s change involved beating the Depression and the Nazis, and Clinton’s involves getting Dick and Jane on line.
I got a leak of the plan for the Clinton Memorial from White House aides eager to prove that the president is doing something. And I must say, I found it moving. Literally.
Only the four greats - Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR were granted land here for major memorials. LBJ got a grove near National Airport. Eisenhower got a theater in the Kennedy Center. So you can imagine what downsizing Clinton will face: the Clinton Memorial will be an Airstream mobile home, summering on the Federal Triangle, in honor of triangulation, and wintering in Hollywood.
The architects want to capture the essence of the Clinton years by having a memorial in flux. Nothing set in stone, nothing stable or consistent.
The monument will start with great promise, but most visitors will lose interest halfway through. In the part devoted to the second term, visitors will be let loose in open fields to wander aimlessly by themselves.
There will be an interactive display, with a virtual Bill Clinton. You will get 15 minutes to sit down with the president and change his mind on a core issue. For a $100,000 donation to the Clinton defense fund, you can virtually spend a night in the Lincoln Bedroom or sit in the Book Room watching billing documents appear and disappear.
In the Hall of Morphing, you can become Bill Clinton and feel him feeling your pain. You can conjure up whichever president pleases you: Liberal Clinton. Conservative Clinton. Elvis Clinton. New Age Clinton. Boxers Clinton. Briefs Clinton.
Instead of statues of people standing in a bread line, as the FDR Memorial has, there will be statues of Clinton friends waiting to testify.
No two days at the memorial - no two hours - will ever be the same. The bronze statues of Bill and Hillary will not stay put. They will be constantly in motion, to the left and the right, on little wheels affixed to their feet so as not to give offense. They will vary in size and weight and tendency. The first lady’s bronze will have a pink patina. His will be a Weeping Clinton, with miraculous sightings of him shedding a tear and biting a lip.
The memorial will be well tended. The statues will be polished every day by Sidney Blumenthal. Joe Klein will lecture on audiotape about generation betrayal and Clinton’s squandered promise. Ira Magaziner will run the gift shop (into the ground). And Web Hubbell will be the groundskeeper, at an annual salary of $575,000.
The eternal wisdom of this president will not be etched in stone, but flashed in holograms. Where the FDR Memorial has “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny,” the Clinton will have “We established in 1994 a women’s pre-qualification pilot program for loan applications of under $250,000 in 16 sites.”
Where the FDR has “We must be the great arsenal of democracy,” the Clinton will have “The 911 emergency number system today is completely overburdened.”
Leaving the Alley of Alibis (“To the best of my recollection,” his voice will boom, “I didn’t know anything”) you enter the Pavilion of Self-Pity, with these words circumscribing the ceiling: “Remembering Richard Jewell of Atlanta and remembering what has happened to so many of the accusations that have been made against me that turned out to be totally baseless, I think that we ought to just get the facts out.”
The most spectacular effect of the Clinton Memorial is saved for last. You will emerge from all that flux into a place that looks and feels identical with where you began.
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