Bush and Clinton are buddies
This amused me:
“Listen, [Bill] Clinton and I are buddies,” the former president [Bush II] said. “First of all, we’re born one month apart. We’re now members of the former presidents club. We have done speaking engagements together. And I generally like him.”
I don’t think it’s BS either; I think it’s true. Their values in their personal life may be worlds apart, but here’s what they have in common, in addition to the things Bush mentioned: a background in the South, a connection to Yale, a genuine conviviality and gregariousness—and even (this was a great surprise to me, because Bush was a jock and Clinton decidedly not) experience as rugby players, a sport known for its toughness.
I can actually imagine them being “buddies”—although not drinking buddies, not anymore. Contrast that to the White House’s present occupant. I can’t really imagine him being “buddies” with anyone.
[NOTE: If you don’t believe me about Clinton and the rugby, take a look at this
Upon graduation, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, though as a result of switching programs and leaving early for Yale, he did not obtain a degree there. He developed an interest in rugby union, playing at Oxford and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas.
Bush attended Yale University from 1964 to 1968, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. During this time, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, being elected the fraternity’s president during his senior year. Bush also became a member of the Skull and Bones society as a senior. Bush was a keen rugby union player, and was on Yale’s 1st XV.]
1. As Newt Gingrich discovered to his dismay, Clinton is not as soft as he looks (I should say, not as soft as he looked before his heart trouble).
2. I consider Bush a failed president, but that doesn’t mean he has to be a failed ex-president. In his new role, I wish him well.
3. As a matter of fact, before he went off the rails, Jimmy Carter went a long way toward salvaging his reputation. (Never mind that going off the rails was the biggest thing to salvage his reputation among the usual suspects.)
4. In general, I endorse displays of bipartisanship among ex-presidents.
One of the few highlights of the 2008 campaign occurred in a pause between a Democrat and Republican primary debate, when candidates of both parties were seen on TV mingling amicably. (Predictably, the incident was denounced by partisan zealots.)
It will be interesting to see how Obama fares in his post-presidential existence.
I have a suspicion he’ll spend the next 30 years trying to rehabilitate the image of his failed presidency, just as Carter has tried to do – but without Carter’s sense of humor….
(yeah, there’s sarcasm in that last bit….)
One of the strange things about Obama is how few friends from high school, college, and law school have surfaced. Does he have any normal, non-political friends?
> I can’t really imagine him being “buddies” with anyone.
Oh, I can. With a long list:
Saul Alinsky
Bill Ayers
Rahid Khalidi
Bernadine Dohrn
Tony Rezko
Oh, wait, I don’t have to “imagine” those buddies at all.
OK, let’s do some we actually don’t know of:
Hugo Chavez
Mao Tse-Tung
Fidel Castro
Pol Pot
Vladimir Lenin
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Yeah, I can see him being buddies with all of them…
So, clearly, “What we have here, is failure to imaginate…”
8^D
The trouble with being friends with someone “from the other side of the aisle” is that what it really signals is that both people recognize their special nature and share this commonality with other “specials”. I don’t want Bush and Clinton to be friends because I want each of them to hold to his policy beliefs over his beliefs in the “specialness” of his office. This is not an easy thing to hold out for. Nancy Pelosi is obviously the outstanding example of someone who feels their office makes them special, but I think essentially every elected official, at least at national level, believes that. F
IGotBupkis: “Fellow-travelers” and “buddies” are hardly synonymous. “Buddies” suggests an ease, tolerance, and warmth that I don’t think exists with the former.
It reminds me that GWB really never grasped America’s internal threats like he did external ones. A Bill Clinton wish list for America includes a central planning nanny state every bit as hideous as Obama’s vision.
I think F misses the point, and the best example I can come up with is the camaraderie that sometimes exists between soldiers who fought on different sides of a conflict. Unless you’re a member of the combat club, you do not understand the link. That does not mean they have forgotten old allegiances, just that they have shared something profound and can, for the moment, appreciate that connection without feeling the need to re-fight the old battles that generated it.
I can say from personal experience that talking to someone (after the fact) who might have had you in his sights is interesting, and sure to generate agreement that your political masters, etc, are a bunch of uninformed yahoos or worse.
In any case, there’s almost never a good reason to ignore the normal rules of polite society.
What’s really sad is that when Barack Obama is a former President the only person he will be able to hang out with is Jimmy Carter.
Beyond that, what LAG says
I think there’s a real chance that Obama will move to a foreign country after his presidency.
LAG: I agree.
I’m reminded of how Harry Truman was friends with Herbert Hoover, although HST was the first to admit that they didn’t talk politics. I feel certain that GWB and WJC don’t talk politics much either.
texexec
Interesting thought.
Problem is that I have a really really difficult time imagining what country would have him.
Any suggestions?
How about Kenya?? bwahahahahaha just kidding he would never move there, too full of real dirt and real people with real problems.
Perhaps Obama isn’t going to seek buddies after his term in office – martyrdom would be more in line for a true ideologue of his stature. He could push the right buttons to bring this ending about and this would even promote his agenda as it enshrined him in leftest folk lore – a true hero. *gag*
“”In any case, there’s almost never a good reason to ignore the normal rules of polite society.””
LAG
Yes there is. When you’re still at war and the enemy is still destroying your grandchildrens future. When the enemy is still economically destroying the lives of your friends and family and the industries they work in.
Bush and Clinton aren’t old warriors. They’re old diplomats that never had a tangible stake or risk of their future in the whole ordeal.
Old warriors are mostly like my grandpa who hated the Japanese with a passion for their barbarity and never bought a Japanese car till the day he died.
I think there’s a real chance that Obama will move to a foreign country after his presidency.
Just like he did at age 10.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Bush and Clinton discuss Barry…
Old warriors are mostly like my grandpa who hated the Japanese with a passion for their barbarity and never bought a Japanese car till the day he died.
My father – who was in the 4th Marine Division on Iwo Jima, among other places – was exactly the same. He didn’t have a kind word for the Japanese to his dying breath.
Texexec: Yep, he will head home for sure.
SteveH, first, I think you missed the “almost” and the point.
There’s a difference between killing someone in combat or who is seriously threatening you or your family and not-killing someone who is no longer a threat.
Soldiers (and others) willingly kill their enemies. The vast majority of them don’t murder them no matter how much they still despise them, especially when the war’s over.
What you seem to suggest is an existential threat and that’s not what I was talking about. I understand the emotional satisfaction that comes from not buying Japanese (or German, for that matter), but so what? We beat them both like red-headed stepchildren and could afford to buy Detroit until we soiled our own linen there.
Are you still fighting the Civil War, too? Hate the British for that massacre in Boston? Still remember the Maine?
LAG, my point was merely that Bush and Clinton are diplomats not really deserving of warrior status. And i don’t hold any hostility toward Japanese. If anything, their transformation into a civilised democracy seems nothing short of miraculous.
I see Obama moving to a posh retirement community with a nice golf course, a B-ball court where people play pick-up hoops, and a nice clubhouse where he can write his memoirs. Hmm, for a title how about, “THE AUDACITY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THEIR FAILURE TO COMPREHEND MY BRILLIANCE.” Sub title – “How the American Education System Failed Me.”
Other than an occasional speaking gig at $100,000 a pop, he will seldom be seen in public, not wanting to accidently run into a TEA Partier or other such ungrateful citizens.
Unlike Carter he will have no need to burnish his legacy. He is a legend in his own mind and that is all he needs.
SteveH,
I understood your point but believe that it advanced a strawman-ish argument, since no one is “still at war,” as you wrote.
Also, I disagree with the characterization of the two men as “diplomats.” At best they are now elder statesmen, though I think that title obscures with a soft historical focus more than it clarifies. I prefer to see them as a couple of old political hacks who had their moment and are now thankfully out to pasture. And I say that with no animosity whatever to either man, just a sense of “move along, nothing to see here.”
And, notwithstanding Rather’s attempt to suggest otherwise, I think Bush can make as much of a claim to warrior-dom as probably 50% of all those who have ever worn the uniform and never got close to combat. He did fly old jets and, war zone or not, that is not for sissies. I say that as a veteran myself.
Finally, the Japanese did not “transform.” The process they underwent demands use of the active voice–they were transformed!–and only after long effort by men like men like your granddad. Even then, at the end, they were told by their emperor in which direction to jump. I’m not sure that’s a formula that yields a necessarily permanent sort of “civilized democracy.”
“A Bill Clinton wish list for America includes a central planning nanny state every bit as hideous as Obama’s vision.”
You may be right, but at least Clinton was wise enough – dare I say humble enough? – to understand that was not America’s wish list. Of course it doesn’t take a heap of humility to be more humble than BO – or wisdom to be wiser for that matter.
It’s dangerous to draw any conclusions about a person’s character from his or her sporting activities because at best it can only be one influence among many on their development.
But if there is any lesson that rugby particularly imparts it’s the importance of commitment. To tackle another player you have to throw yourself at their legs and knock them off their feet. To avoid being tackled you have to run like the Devil is chasing you. You have to ignore the bruises and focus on the goal, and you go all-out or you lose. The attitude that the sport promotes is “damn the torpedoes!”.
Bush and Clinton were both extremely determined in their different ways, so it’s easy to imagine either of them playing rugby. It’s very hard to imagine Obama doing anything like that.