These days are furnishing us with plentiful demonstrations of how to be an ex-president — and how not to be one.
It’s amusing to hear Bill Clinton, supposedly in campaign mode for President Obama, mouthing Republican talking points — he backed keeping taxes at their current level, though the level to which he raised them (his tax hike passed by one vote in the Senate and two in the House) is the one that Obama so eagerly wishes to restore. Typically, he then denied saying what he had said, so the overall effect is a muddle, but the policy isn’t important. What’s important is generating headlines — twice.
Here is the Big He in Chicago, unloading the typical meaningless techno-blather that, for so long, so many people mistook for actual economic intelligence: “There are opportunities to create jobs where there is demand and where you can figure out the financing. It just occurred to me that somebody ought to be doing this on a systematic basis. And if we did a good job, after a couple years, we could make sure every governor and every mayor in the country knew what we’d done, and there’d be an opportunity to set up versions of it where they are. That’s why I’m doing it. I’m just trying to accelerate the return to full recovery.”
“Just”! Shucks, if all he’s doing is bringing on a full recovery, he should be done before lunch. Then he can solve AIDS in Africa over cocktails.
Ex-presidents should with dignity exit the stage and leave the pilot’s seat to their successors. Take George W. Bush, who at the unveiling of his presidential portrait in the White House made a couple of witty, self-deprecating remarks. Then he skipped away, declining to instruct or scold the current president. He had his eight years, and now it’s someone else’s turn.
A new documentary on HBO next week, “41,” about George H.W. Bush, is another portrait in class. The elder Bush thinks (with good reason) that Ross Perot cost him re-election in 1992, but he offers only a single sentence on the matter. He doesn’t attack his successors either, nor does he try to work the refs of history by talking up his achievements. He doesn’t even seek to be called “Mr. President” any more.
Since Bill Clinton won’t be president again, his opinions don’t matter any more than any other private citizen’s, and they muddy the waters for the Democratic Party. But the Bill in the china shop is still doing what he has always done: Whatever it takes to grab attention.
He says carefully crafted things meant to burnish his image like, “You realize that you need the Republicans and the Democrats. You need the liberals and the conservatives.” Translation: Obama can’t get anything done because he’s a party hack, not a member of the enlightened triangulators’ club.
At an Obama event in New York, Clinton said, “Remember me? I’m the only guy that gave you four surplus budgets out of the eight I sent.” Translation: and four more than Obama will ever deliver.
On Tuesday, he said the economy was in a recession, which is both incorrect and not quite the backup tune Obama needs as he sings of his own job-creating prowess.
Clinton’s lack of courage, which served him well as president when he allowed a center-right country to largely steer itself, means that he hasn’t delved much into matters of war. Not so Jimmy Carter, who has been an even worse ex-president, one who doesn’t just bloviate on economic policy but actually meddles in America’s foreign affairs and has repeatedly dismayed our troops and allies while giving cheer to our enemies.
Carter dignified Hamas by meeting with its leader, in direct contradiction of State Department advice (while referring to Israeli policy toward the Palestinians as “apartheid”). He has blamed the “extra stingy” US for poverty in the third world, helped craft a speech for Yasser Arafat, visited North Korea to announce US sanctions were “a serious mistake,” urged the UN Security Council to oppose US involvement in reversing Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and said Tony Blair was “compliant and subservient” for being our ally.
All of these loaded, often venomous words are meant to make news, not solutions, and that’s what they did for Carter, who has enjoyed a lucrative career as an author and speaker.
The sample size of these ex-presidents is small. But Republican modesty about the limits of government seems to be matched by a becoming personal modesty, an ability to cede the spotlight with grace and honor. Democratic policy overreach about the possibility, and necessity, of “fundamentally transforming” our country accompanies personal pomposity.
Can you imagine an ex-President Obama visiting the White House to make a joke at his own expense? Being everyone’s savior is serious business.