THIS being London, Bill Clinton was stuck in traffic and late. This being winter, the former US President had a croaking cold. This being after September 11, his audience had stood outside for half an hour in the freezing damp while secret service agents swept the building to their satisfaction.
But there was still a thrill when he finally appeared on the podium at the London School of Economics, daughter Chelsea in tow. Never mind that he had cut up the grass at Turnberry and had his effigy burnt by pro-Palestinian protesters in Glasgow. Th
ere was the former President, with his bouffant hairdo, receding eyes and trademark physicality, resting his hand on the shoulder of a starstruck academic like a preacher bestowing a casual benediction.
The LSE was bound to give him a respectful welcome. Its director, the sociologist Anthony Giddens, helped Clinton and Tony Blair invent the Third Way, writing the books and addressing the seminars that lent it intellectual credibility. Clinton, doomed to be remembered for sex, lies and Whitewater, is addicted to ideas.
That was what came over most powerfully on Thursday night. His lecture - given on the cheap, according to the LSE, which would have struggled to stump up his usual fee - was a dry run for a possible visiting professorship. Judging by the standing ovation, Giddens will be penning the invitation this weekend.
Clinton’s relaxed rhetoric and range of reference put him in a different league from most political leaders. His unembarrassed idealism makes Tony Blair sound strained and George W Bush sound desiccated. His analysis of the war was realistic, his prescription for peace inspiring.
Listening to that combination of Baptist folksiness and progressive liberalism, it was tempting to feel wistful for the days when a thoughtful President occupied the Oval Office. It is hard to evoke the sediment of cynicism and disgrace he left behind. It is hard to associate the man on the platform with Marc Rich and Monica Lewinsky.
But Clinton’s White House was a million miles away from being Camelot. And the painful question - painful for anyone on the centre-left - is whether he would have responded to September 11 any differently, or any better, than his successor.
President Bush could not have formulated, let alone articulated, half of what Clinton said on Thursday night. But with popularity ratings of 90%, it scarcely matters. Bush seems to satisfy his country’s need for simple reassurance and cowboy bellicosity. The hands-off figurehead is as apt for this crisis as the details-mad Democrat would have been. The ignorant isolationist, surrounded by veterans like Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld, has held together an international coalition that the foreign policy wonk must admire. The right-wing Texan is as cosy with Tony Blair as the Third Way Anglophile.
Bush, with his narrow world view and cardboard simplicity, is well cast for the black-and-white morality play that is the "war on international terrorism". As one of his congressmen, Roy Blunt from Missouri, remarked, "Complexity in a leader is not a helpful thing, and certainly not a helpful thing in a crisis."
Clinton is unhelpfully complex. So complex, and so disappointing, that he had to be re-created in a parallel television universe as Josiah Bartlett in The West Wing, a drama series that is one long lovesong to the upright, continent President Clinton never was. The fictional rewrite restores a sense of continuity between man and statesman. For Clinton’s presidency was a blow to those who argue that a politician’s public and private morality can be kept separate. The lying bled from private to public.
Even now, the dissonance is perplexing. Asked by an LSE student whether Hillary would make a good President, her husband gave a glowing character reference. "She would be unbelievably good at it. She’s the ablest person I’ve ever known - the best combination of mind and heart, of toughness and compassion with administrative capacity." It sounded - no doubt it was - a sincere tribute to the woman he betrayed and humiliated.
After such complexity, the narrowness of Bush must come almost as a relief. Some previously critical US commentators argue that September 11 has matured him. He suits the times, while Clinton is receding into history.
It was Bush who addressed America from the rubble of Ground Zero - though Clinton had visited the previous day. It will be Bush who announces the death or capture of Osama bin Laden, though Clinton made several attempts to have him arrested or killed in the Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Bush bears the burden of responsibility for deaths abroad and security at home, while Clinton is alone with his memoirs and his lucrative speaking engagements.
But if he has no role in the war, the former President has strong views about preserving future peace. His LSE performance had the flavour of an application to save the world or run the UN.
To secure their safety, he argues, rich countries must bail out the developing world. They must spend now to avert instability caused by ignorance, illness, poverty and global warming.
In Pakistan, for example, the madrasas or religious schools flourish because state education ran out of money. If the west poured funds into schools, said Clinton, children would not be taught "that dinosaurs are being sent by the Israelis to kill Muslims".
Cash for the UN’s anti-Aids programme could prevent the emergence of a desperate generation in India, Africa and China. Lending money to poor tradespeople in countries like Egypt, where it takes a baker 300 days to register his business (the kind of detail Clinton loves), would combat the poverty in which fundamentalism thrives. Investing in renewable energy could help insure against floods that threaten displacement and despair.
"We just gotta fund this stuff," said Clinton. Of course it would cost money, but with the Afghan campaign costing $1bn a month, "it’s a lot cheaper than war."
It sounds like wild idealism and common sense rolled into one. However tarnished Clinton’s reputation, his ideas are bright. They deserve to survive his mistakes.
The full article contains 1047 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
