Get Well, Bubba!

Not everything is relative, but some things are.

By 2000 the nation seemd to have Clinton fatigue. Enough of Bill's lip-biting and infinitely-parseable sentences, enough of Hillary's smartest-woman-in-the-world schtick. After eight years of the whole honky-tonk show, it was a breath of fresh air to have a plain-talking, straight-shooting man in the Oval Office, even if he sometimes seemed to be taking public speaking lessons from Dan Quayle.

Everyone has their own opinion of the presidency of G.W. Bush, and it may be impossible to look objectively at the man and his administration until a few years have passed. I, for one, think that history will be much kinder to him than the pundits and the editorial pages have been. But I digress.

During his presidency a fascinating phenomenon occurrred when he tapped his predecessor and his (own) father, Clinton's predecessor, to lead fundraising efforts after the tsunami which devastated regions of Asia and Africa in late 2004. A funny thing happenned: the two ex-presidents, as different in background and temperament as possible, and who had said some not-very-nice things about each other during the 1992 presidential campaign, hit it off. So much so that for months afterward the pair were practically ubiquitous, appearing together on television many times. The pair reprised their efforts after Hurricane Katrina, and now we have a further Bush-Clinton collaboration in the cause of relief for Haiti (although it seems as though the younger Bush has supplanted his father on this one)

Thanks to efforts like this, and due in no small part to the fading memories of 'Slick Willy', Clinton's image has been largely rehabilitated, and some people seem moved to sympathy for him by reason of his marital attachment to Lady Hillary(!)

I must confess that the passage of time has indeed dulled some of my personal distaste for the perjurious former philanderer-in-chief, but it wasn't until recently, as "Year One" of the new era of hopeychange came to an end, that I found myself experiencing an emotional response I'd never expected: I'm nostalgic for Clinton! Bring back the Arkansas snake oil, and the bimbo erruptions, and the now-you-see-em-now-you-don't billing records from the Rose Law Firm. Compared to the present administration ol' Billy Blythe looks pretty good right about now.

Relatively, at least...