Peggy Noonan: Just Friends ( Clinton and Bush I )

[question everything]

(apologies if already posted, did not find anything when I searched)

WSJ.com OpinionJournal

PEGGY NOONAN
Just Friends
There's something unserious about Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush's newfound affection.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

(snip)

What does Democrat Bill Clinton get out of cultivating the Republican Bushes? He gets public approval from a man most of the country sees as personally upstanding. When Mr. Bush puts his arm around Mr. Clinton, he confers his rectitude. Democrats won't mind it, and independent voters will like it. In receiving the embrace of the patriarch of such a famously Republican family, Mr. Clinton looks like someone who is, by definition, nonradical, mainstream, not too unacceptably odd and grifter-ish. Big bonus: Mr. Clinton knows that when he receives Mr. Bush's affectionate approval, his wife, who will soon be running for president, also seems by extension to be receiving it. This is good for her. Both Clintons pick up some positive attention from on-the-ground Republicans. This is good too.

What does the elder Mr. Bush get out of it? He burnishes his reputation for personal generosity and a certain above-it-all nonpartisanship. He shows he's not narrow like a conservative, but national like a great leader. This has a spillover effect on his son, the incumbent president. The more his father embraces the foe, the more embracing the current President Bush looks. By publicly declaring his closeness with Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush senior demonstrates a high minded interest in political comity and a rejection of mere party politics, unlike the low little people who are inspired by animus and always getting het up about their little issues. Would a former president Pat Buchanan hug a former president Clinton? Huh, go dream.

(snip)

Both like to like people; they enjoy admitting they're softies. Both no doubt share the view that a great democracy cannot operate in a healthy manner when the members of its political parties hate each other. Both feel some attachment to the kind of beyond-mere-partisanship sentiments that are pleasing to one's inner David Broder. And both have been presidents. They know what the job is and share the bond of having been there.

(snip)

What bothers me about the fervid friendship of the Bushes and Mr. Clinton - and the media celebration of it - is the faint whiff of superiority, a sense they radiate that all those slightly icky little people running around wailing about issues--tax reform, the relation of the individual to the state, the necessary character of a president--and working the precincts are somehow . . . a little below them. There is an air of condescension toward that grubby thing, belief. Those who hold it are not elevated, don't quite fit into the high-minded nonpartisan brotherhood. When in fact the people doing the day-to-day work of democracy, and who are in it because they are impelled by deep belief and philosophy, are actually not below them at all, and perhaps above them. Not that they're on the cover of People hugging, but at least they're serious.

(snip)

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110007120 (subscription)

[notadmblnd]

1. well the only thing it tells me ......

is that Clinton is one of them.

[electropop]

2. Not sure that associating with Bushes is good for the career

when most people see them as a crime family. Maybe it's like Sinatra and the Mafia: just craves that bare-knuckle street cred.

[PATRICK]

3. Clinton's friendliness

is unimaginably naive even for a clubbish political circle. Honestly having a heart to heart with Gingrich only paid off when Gingrich dared to bitch slap him with their determination to get him "because we can."

He learned something there he later applied to his further muddled emotional lack of judgment in the impeachment scandal. He dared risk everything for a fling "because he could".

It is a fatal but kindly meant judgment flaw that both makes Clinton belovedly humane and doofishly dangerous up against the suited villains of the world.

Maybe the humane approach will, Gandhi-like, triumph and confound the evil bent of others, but unfortunately it is fog of mellow judgment not a spiritual clarity at work.

The chummy sanctity of power and money for most of us is rapidly losing its false luster, but not in the sated circles of media worshiped Olympus. Their is no morality or leadership their. Clinton may be an awesome innocent in Hell but thankfully Bush Jr. is forcing clarity the opposite way of both elder predecessors.

[cybildisobedience]

4. what this article overlooks....

is how Bush I benefits from Clinton's personal charisma and widespread popularity, or, at the very least, hiding his unpopularity. Not a word about that from Peggy, of course.
When Bush I strides onto the field before the Super Bowl with Clinton, he can delude himself that the boos might be for Clinton, but the cheers are for him. And of course, no mainstream commentator is going to suggest otherwise.