The Price of Idealism

I think history will remember Bill Clinton as a better President than George W. Bush, but not because Clinton was a Democrat. In fact, in his own way Clinton was much more of a challenge to the Democratic base built under FDR than George W ever was to the Reagan Republicans.

As the 2008 election looms, I think the distinction between Clinton and Bush is more important than ever. We face a slew of candidates with real experience - Hillary, McCain, Romney, Giuliani. Despite the symphony of flip-flopping coming from the direction of these power-brokers, I feel confident about this election. I'm almost walking on air. Because these men (and woman) aren't like Bush - in fact, they're all a lot more like Clinton.

Clinton wasn't a Democrat. He wasn't much of an idealist at all. He passed on the terrorist threat, but he contributed troops to the NATO forces that bombed the Balkans during the Kosovo war (a deployment for which he, much like Bush II in Iraq, was roundly criticized). Clinton was a big believer in "Coalitions of the Willing," although unlike Bush he didn't borrow heavily from the black-and-white rhetoric of the Apocalypse.

Nonetheless, Clinton cut federal spending and capped government welfare benefits. He gave the States the right to distribute their own welfare income, a distribution of power long associated with the Republican Party. In this, he was a centrist, as has been noted. But he was also part of a longer and more glorious political tradition: realpolitik.

Realpolitik was a term first coined by Otto von Bismarck, the pragmatic political genius who engineered German unification in the late nineteenth century. He is remembered as one of the most diabolitical and brilliant minds of all time. Henry of Navarre, one of the most popular kings of old France, was another real politician. In 1593, he said that "Paris was well worth a Mass" and converted to Catholicism. In so doing, he won over France's Catholic majority and tolerated its Protestant minority. He passed laws that united the nation's warring religious parties, and ushered in a new era of religious tolerance. Queen Elizabeth the First was another example: the rare ruler who managed multiple factions with ease. Even Abraham Lincoln, who held the US together during the Civil War, only freed slaves in Confederate states, letting those in border territories fend for themselves.

Meanwhile, history regales us with stories of brilliant but misguided idealists, whose governments were marked by both spectacular successes and failures. Indira Gandhi, an idealistic federalist, wrought havoc on Indian society with her agricultural initiatives and forced sterilization programs. Margaret Thatcher, as British Prime Minister, won military acclaim in the Falklands, but mismanaged taxes that later led to massive unemployment. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan (a real prototype for Bush II) helped initiate unsustainable tax cuts, escalated the Cold War, witnessed the Iran-Contra scandal, armed Osama bin Laden and invented "Reagonomics" from wholecloth. (He also took the laudable step of reforming Social Security.) Jimmy Carter, an idealist if ever there was one, raised payroll taxes and manhandled the Iran hostage crisis.

Not to suggest that Gandhi, Thatcher, Reagan and Carter were failures as national leaders. The truth is, to stay in power, everyone compromises. But some people do it brilliantly and often, whereas others do it grudgingly and rarely. The begruders are the problem. They lack real unifying power, and their political reigns usually end in a morass of ineffectiveness and public distrust.

George W Bush has fallen - actually, run willingly - into the same trap. He's tried to keep every campaign promise he ever made. He's given us our tax cuts, our prescription drug benefit, and our homeland security department. He's stayed true to his vision of America, which is larger than any one man. And yet, against all the odds, it isn't working. He himself admits he's no great student of history, which might explain why he missed this critical lesson. In order to hold a country together, a leader has to sell out. Bush can't sell out - it's against his stubborn Texan nature. If he doesn't like a policy, he gives it the death penalty.

And that's why Clinton was, underneath it all, more effective. True, he wasn't all that moral. He did screw an intern. But Bush, by placing personal morality above political necessity, managed to screw the entire nation.