What is the deal with Bush, Bush & Clinton, and am I the only one to find this presidential reality show, starring Theirs Truly, extremely annoying?
What we see in photo-op after photo-op is something that goes beyond protocol, the codified strictures that have evolved to lend that impersonal, if awesome, dignity to gatherings of state, right down to their least prepossessing attendees. We see instead "The Three Amigos," as Newsweek has dubbed Bush, Bush & Clinton. The Three Amigos can't have dignity; they have to have personality. Camaraderie. Maybe even adventures aboard Air Force One. First stop, tsunami-land, where Dad and Bill offer aid and comfort in leisure wear. Next, it's Dad and Bill and W. in Rome, soberly suited for the pope's funeral. Then, it's dinner for three with Berlusconi; later, it's briefings for the "troika" with Condi. What next -- a remake of "The Three Musketeers"?
The fact is, these guys aren't all for one and one for all. And this is where things get annoying. First of all, as presidents they don't just represent the culmination of the democratic process at a given time -- 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004, respectively. They bring clanging, clashing generational baggage to the job; they can't help it. George Bush (41) is the last president from the so-called Greatest Generation. Bill Clinton (42) is the first president from the Baby Boom. Symbolically, they are as far apart as World War II and the 1960s. George W. Bush (43) may be the second president from the Baby Boom, but not having opposed the Vietnam War as Bill Clinton did, he skipped the elite-approved New Left 1960s experience. (In case you missed the 2004 election, George W. Bush joined the Air National Guard in 1968; at about that time, in case you missed the 1992 election, Bill Clinton "loathe(d) the military.")
Of course, that's just how these men started out on their distinctly separate paths to the Oval Office: It's what they did there once they got behind the desk that really makes the buddy routine ring false. Or what Clinton did there, that is. And I'm not just talking about the Oval Office-overlap of Monica Lewinsky, oral sex, and a telephone discussion with a congressman about troop movements in Bosnia -- although certainly this less-than-harmonic convergence is the nadir of the American presidency. The grime, slop and tawdriness of the Clinton years is infamous, culminating not in the historic Clinton impeachment in 1998, but in a slew of 11th-hour Clinton pardons in January 2001 for assorted crooks and cretins.