"Missing you already..."
November 6, 2000 11:46 PM   Subscribe

"Missing you already..." A great column from the Guardian on the Clinton legacy: "Today America is choosing between two half-Clintons. They can have a version of his smarts, in Al Gore, or a version of his warmth, in George W Bush. Clinton wants the voters to choose Gore, of course, to protect his legacy. But if America picks Bush, that will be a kind of compliment, too."
posted by holgate (1 comment total)
 
As someone who actually had a stake in the country the author describes, I beg to differ. "(Americans) will miss the daily triumphs and disasters of a character of Shakespearean complexity." No. No, I won't. I look foward with relish to the end of this pathetic Hee Haw soap opera. "(Americans) will miss his signature feature, one which may well have redefined the presidency itself: an almost eerie gift for empathy." I read this, and I thought: well, if that's what it takes to run a country, hire that pale pain-sucker from the Trek episode. And then I get to this:

"Clinton was like that Star Trek character, the empath, who can psychically read the emotions of those before him; he had a mind-reader's ability to see into the hearts of any individual or group he faced. "

Maybe. He was also like the Doomsday Machine, an object of enormous appetite that chopped up anything in his path. He was also like that red swirly thing in "Day of the Dove," feeding off the energy released by "Partisanship." He was also like the big Greek in "Who Mourns for Adonis" in his outsized need for adulation. Or the Horta, for his ability to tunnel through walls by excreting acid.

Okay, maybe not that last one.
posted by lileks at 8:07 AM on November 7, 2000


« Older   |   The Unfaithful Electors Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments