COLUMN: Reflections of a head of state

From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '98 From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '98 Let us go then, you and I, to the dim recesses of that semi-private place. Down forgetful rivers, through enchanted forests, across dusky plains. Doors open and close revealing glimpses of power, orators yelling at fickle mobs, secret handshakes, Al Gore doing the Macarena. The golden arches of McDonalds loom large on the horizon. Milky haze surrounds the edges of vision and a slight echo returns every sound. "I wanted to be a rock star so I ran for president. Does that surprise you? Of course, it wasn't that simple. It took a while for me to change ambitions, or perhaps I should say, to change the focus of my ambition. What? But don't you see? They're one and the same thing, rock star and president, both pop icons (though presidents get more press). And people love you, honest they do. Can you hear them, the maddening crowds, the screaming fans, the teeming millions all come out to see the greatest act of the age! "But, oh, the ravages of time. How much better I looked in '92, when the world first came to know the name of William Jefferson Clinton. Do you remember when I did 'Heartbreak Hotel' on Arsenio? Believe you me, the dreams of youth don't just disappear in a man: they fade slowly, like color from a photograph, and they leave a small residue of hope. Aw, now I'm getting nostalgic, and it's about time for a confession. (Come close, I don't want everyone to hear this, so I'm going to whisper.) Sure I'm president and all, but what I really wanted to be was? The King! "I wanted to charge the stage like Dunkirk, brilliant in white sequins. Can you see the flashing lights? I wanted to mumble to a crowd of old ladies in the Catskills, top lip twisted in a stoned sneer. Little girls in poodle skirts would hang my picture in their lockers. "I wanted to rot in a pink Vegas hotel room, surrounded by bacon, lettuce and tomato. My name in lights, my prison movie on TV, plastic figurines and platinum records. I wanted camp-followers, hangers-on, sycophants, room service. "Later the ladies who passed through the turnstile of my life would confess to People magazine. The juxtaposition of then-and-now pictures would really kill 'em. 'How did the bathing beauty become a dowdy old grandma?' they'd say. 'When did she trade her maillot for pedigreed dogs?' Glassy-eyed, they'd discuss our brief time together, our rides in the Hollywood hills, the fast cars, the crazy hours. Then, inevitably, the drugs, the mood swings and the early morning wake-ups. "I'd go to rehab for two weeks and emerge in sunglasses, laughing. Rehab's for quitters, I'd tell the press, and they'd get a kick out of me. Not only can he sing, but he can talk too! "Then one day I shook John Kennedy's hand and I had a new idea: I wanted to play the White House. I wanted to play it good and hard, in a gold lamZ tuxedo. It was then that I knew. Jack says to me, he says, "power accommodates excess." He made me see things, pool parties with mob molls, catered balls at Camp David, FBI chiefs in drag. Yes, Elvis was good. But Jack, Jack was great. "So I sought fame in a new incarnation. Now I wanted to be famous in a political way, like JFK, intensely, tangibly present. Traffic would stop when I came to town, stony-faced secret service fox-trotting alongside my motorcade. Women sang to Jack, famous and beautiful women -- the King's women? "Alas (and here the president sighs), women that don't exist. No, I do not think they will sing to me. I'm resigned to reality. I live with McDonald's like you, feel want, taste grief, need contributions. And don't you know that politics is a dirty game? 'Subjected thus, how can you say to me, I am a King.' I'm no Elvis, and, senator, I'm no Jack Kennedy. Instead of Marilyn I have Monica, lawyers in lieu of teeny-boppers. The ship's going down, boys. I'm all shook up?." Politics has a reciprocal relationship with fantasy. All the conflicting narratives of culture converge in the person of the president, at once man and metonym, fact and fiction. He's the terminus for all our projections, a stancher of wounds acting out our naughty fantasies on the big stage. He reflects an age which he helps to create, a leader of men and a follower of women. The lumber room of Clinton's unconscious must be strewn with oddments of ambition, trophies, old pictures, disembodied headlines. We have no idea who the real Bill Clinton is, if there is such a thing. With every speech and handshake we drift further and further from that lost essence until eventually we come upon locked room. A smile, as Melville said, is the guise for all ambiguities. Clinton just wanted to be immortal in his time. A clean, resolute immortality, the stuff of marble monuments. But something went wrong. He had what they called a tragic flaw, an Elizabethan sovereign thrust into the absurd posture of postmodernity. He had regal appetites and Kingly aspirations, ambitions instead of convictions. He wanted to play stadiums. He wanted to weather the epochs astride equestrian statues. Fame was his destination of choice; politics was only the most direct route. The private side of Clinton's public life has been dramatized for the sake of his audience, not his office. He gives his job the old college try, and that's all we should ask of him. But we also demand entertainment, big boys behaving badly. Scandal animates the bland spirit of bureaucracy, it puts a human face on it and reminds us that hey the president's not so different from you and me. We're all of us voyeurs gazing through celebrity's key-hole. His passions are our passions, writ large. Above all, he wanted to be loved.