Poor President Clinton. So bright, so gifted, so knowledgeable, so eloquent. What must he be thinking?
While the former president and Rhodes Scholar begins his retreat into historical obscurity, George W. Bush holds the high ground in public opinion polls, in spite of his C+ average at Yale, his fractured syntax and "misunderestimations" and his occasional deer-caught-in-the-headlights visage.
What makes for presidential greatness? Periodically, members of the American Historical Association -- primarily a group of academics -- complete a survey to rank America's presidents, and over the years, the results have been remarkably consistent. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt always end up at the top, while perennially feeding at the bottom are Richard Nixon and Warren G. Harding.
The common denominators for greatness are whether the president faced a national crisis and how aptly he handled it. Fumbling a crisis will guarantee second-class status, but so will never handling a crisis at all. George Washington helped found the nation and guided it through the difficult 1790s. Abraham Lincoln triumphed in the Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt carried the country through the Great Depression and World War II.
Bill Clinton will never be ranked anywhere near the top. He spent eight years in the White House without ever facing a major crisis, except those of his own making. "Dubya" now has what Bill Clinton never did: a real, tangible, gut-wrenching threat to national security that will require gifted leadership. In the U.S. history books of the 22nd century, Bill Clinton will be relegated to a couple of paragraphs, and the topic sentence of one of them will be a stained, blue dress.
George W. Bush, on the other hand, never seemed like he would find the legacy in history that Clinton always wanted. Surely, he is not what many of us expected in a president. Clinton got a lot of flack for smoking marijuana and dodging the draft. For his part, Bush was an alcoholic and at least a casual cocaine user at one time. He also avoided going to Vietnam in the National Guard, got lucky in Texas oil and wound up owning the Texas Rangers. But during the campaign, Bush completely skirted questions about his past, while Al Gore seemed to drown in them.
He fell upon politics ungracefully, perhaps as he has fallen on many other things, but he proved the perfect governor in a state of mavericks, a governor with a sincere commitment to transcending the bickering of party politics. His redneckish dedication to "rolling up his sleeves" and "getting some things done" had made him a success in Austin.
But before Sept. 11, all of these accoutrements made him seem like a fool in the public eye. The "true" outcome of the 2000 election was continually disputed in the media for months after Bush had been sworn in. Reporters nicknamed him "Dubya" and made poems with his own words to make fun of his rhetorical ineptitude. Foreign leaders, particularly Russian President Vladmir Putin, questioned who was really running the country, Bush or his aides.
Now, though, his country bumpkin handshake politics have won America over, as well as most of the world. It seemed fitting to see him, as opposed to a globe-trotting diplomat, standing on the rubble of the World Trade Center, in jeans and an FDNY cap, sounding his barbaric yawps through a megaphone to cheering firefighters.
Of course, his actions immediately after the attacks are still in question, but few doubts can be raised about his leadership since. In his address to Congress on Sept. 21, he erased his past, all of it, and became an endearing and courageous international figure. Yesterday, even Bob Herbert, the supremely left-leaning columnist for The New York Times, admitted that the speech was "masterful."
On Tuesday night, President Bush did it again. His speech was so deft, so commanding, that even Dick Gephart, in his response, was left with no rejoinders, only the warm language of bipartisanship.
Since Sept. 11, Bush has led the charge in the war on terrorism, creating the unlikeliest of coalitions. Pakistan transformed almost overnight from a rogue state to a key ally; Russia and China are finally amenable; and Tony Blair briefly became our executor of foreign policy.
Domestically, Bush's actions are not yet the stuff of legend, but if he continues to campaign across the country with such zeal and vehemence, he may yet edge his way into the company of greatness.
Moreover, his audacity in calling Iraq, Iran and North Korea's bluffs last night was admirable and if he continues to fight for our security so successfully, the stuttering, stubborn and sometimes goofy Texan could be one of the most important President's in our history.
What an irony. Only in America.
Brad Olson is a senior History major from Huntsville, Texas.
