Say what you like about Bill Clinton, he was no liberal
The largest of the occasions to mark the publication of Bill Clinton's autobiography was
reportedly described in Manhattan as 'the mother of all book parties'. The phrase comes down to us from Saddam Hussein's promising the American-led coalition, massing against him after his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, that it would have to fight 'the mother of all battles'.
Except that the Manhattan occasion sounded grimmer. Saddam, after all, quickly lost in 1990-91. The Mother of All Book Parties had more ruthless commanders than Saddam. The party was fought at the strategic Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alfred A. Knopf was in overall command. This Knopf is not a single general, like Eisenhower or General Norman Schwarzkopf, but, according to the newspaper account I read. 'a division of Random House' — a military term if ever there was one.
Random House was presumably the building requisitioned as military headquarters. Perhaps it was set in leafy, rolling countryside, like the places from where Ike and Monty planned D-Day, or like the command chateaux behind the lines in the first world war, or from where Rommel conducted his doomed defence in Normandy. From Random House. then, the order went out that the crack Alfred A. Knopf division was to be thrown at the Museum of Modern Art in support of Mr Clinton and his sales. America's seemingly endless resources of champagne from New York state, Californian wines, canapes, dim sum, pretzels and swizzle sticks were to be hurled into the fight; symbolising, to the world, that the United States was the arsenal of publicity.
The guests included, according to the report, 'actors Uma Thurman, Glenn Close and Peter Boyle, the film director Robert Altman, the cult novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Salman Rushdie, Joe Klein, the author of the Clinton novel Primary Colors, and the comedian Al Franken'. Not all of those names will mean a lot to British readers. Some of us would not be able to put an idea or a face to Mr Boyle or Mr Franken. But we must assume that, in targeting them. the Random House brass knew at whom they were aiming. These were no innocent civilians. In the middle of it all, we can imagine a beaming Mr Clinton receiving the compliments of actresses, suborned liberal journalists and cult novelists. Mr Clinton has always struck me as an amiable, harmless rascal. Except, that is, in one matter. Had I been invited to that party, which I was not, I would have felt the urge which I felt when Mr Clinton received similar left-liberal adulation when he addressed the Labour party conference at Blackpool two years ago. I would have wanted to position myself in the middle of the throng and bawl something at the assembled idealists and claimants to a compassion for the poor and downtrodden greater than that of the rest of us. It would have been: 'Ask him what he thinks about capital punishment.'
It is reasonable to suppose that most of the guests would, at one time or another, have deplored the executions which the then Governor Bush presided over in Texas. Yet Mr Clinton was a signer of death warrants as Governor of Arkansas. The most memorable of them was during his successful 1992 primary campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. He flew back to Arkansas to be in the state, as governor, for the execution of a black man, part of whose head had been shot away during the robbery in which he committed the murder for which he was sentenced to death. When executed, therefore, he was not sane. He did not know what was happening to him. When taken from his cell to his execution, he referred to what he would do on his return to the cell.
It is fair to speculate that Mr Clinton allowed that execution because had he reprieved the wretch, voters would have thought him 'soft' on crime and capital punishment. Had I uttered my cry to the compassionate crowd at the Museum of Modern Art, I would presumably have been set on by the Secret Service and brutal Manhattan hostesses, assuming I had not already been shot instantly by crack snipers from the Alfred A. Knopf division. That is why I would have kept quiet. As would various British — and presumably American — liberal journalists who have marked his autobiography by interviewing him. None have asked him about capital punishment, still less about that particular execution.
For there is something that Mr Clinton has in common with Ronald Reagan. Reagan's supporters would have us believe that he was more right-wing than he was; Mr Clinton's that he was more liberal. Both sides use them to help fight their present battles; liberals against President Bush, right-wingers for him.
Also, each president is loved because of his enemies.
Mr Clinton's enemies were his would-be impeachers. The impeachment clause in the constitution was never intended to deal with such a matter as Mr Clinton's relations with Miss Lewinsky. It says that the president could be impeached for 'treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours'. Mr Clinton's lying about his relations with Miss Lewinsky did not fit into any of those categories. It is understandable that Mr Clinton's admirers should detest those Republicans who suggested that it did, especially since so many of them retreated once the opinion polls showed that a majority did not think Mr Clinton's conduct was impeachable.
But that is no reason to turn him into a liberal hero. His presidency was an extension of Mr Reagan's. Consider Mr Clinton's most important domestic policies: he relied on Republican congressional votes to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) in 1993, a measure Mr Reagan had proposed but which met much congressional Democratic opposition. He signed a Republican Bill cutting welfare payments, his pollsters having told him that it might impair his re-election if he did not. He allowed the Federal Reserve's Alan Greenspan to conduct what we would call a Thatcherite monetary policy. Thus, during Mr Clinton's presidency, inflation was kept down, employment was eventually increased, and Mr Clinton's re-election ensured against the aged Senator Dole.
Doubtless Mr Clinton did not take office expecting any of that. But heads of government are often the beneficiaries, and victims, of what they did not intend. Mr Clinton also kept the United States out of big wars. He intended that. But Mr Reagan, whatever his reputation, did so too. Mr Clinton, then, deserved the adulation of his party this week. But that was because it was the Books party and not the Democratic party.
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