A Question of Character
If Bill Clinton didn't exist, would it be possible to invent him? Of all
modern political leaders, he seems the least likely as a character. A Henry
James or a Joseph Conrad might do justice to the tensions in Clinton's
political career--the tug of war between idealism and cynicism, the empathy for
others, and the calculating self-interest. Sinclair Lewis or Theodore Dreiser
might depict his climb from provincial obscurity. But who could concoct the
juxtapositions of the president's personality? It is hard to think of a figure
from English or American literature who combines, for instance,
self-destructive sexual interests with an insatiable appetite for domestic
policy, or Clinton's mix of high intelligence and low taste. Has anyone
scripted him? Let us consider the writers whose inventions capture aspects of
the presidential personality.
William
Shakespeare: When you think of political tragedy, you think
immediately of Shakespeare. Richard Nixon, the last president to face
impeachment, was clearly a Shakespearean character. To be precise, the Nixon of
Watergate was Richard III, the self-pitying monster. The Clinton of Flytrap is
not half so dark a figure--underhanded, perhaps, but not purely malevolent. If
Clinton exists in Shakespeare, it might be as an amalgamation of the bad
qualities of Falstaff and Henry V. He has Falstaff's appetites for food and
fornication (without his humor or ironic wisdom). He has Prince Hal's political
ambition and disloyalty to his old friends (without his heroism or rhetorical
eloquence). But Shakespeare isn't right for Bill Clinton, who even in collapse
lacks the grandeur of the Bard's tragic heroes and the absurdity of his comic
ones. Shakespeare may provide more models for the first lady. She thinks of
herself as Portia, the clever lawyer in The Merchant of Venice .
Republicans think of her as a scheming Lady Macbeth. Lately, the public sees
her as that unfortunate victim of her husband, Othello 's Desdemona.
W illiam Faulkner: Our general image of
Clinton's past--Southern poverty with overtones of alcoholism and
inbreeding--comes mostly from Faulkner. In the Snopes trilogy ( The
Hamlet , The Town , and The Mansion ), we find the models for
Clinton's father, Will Blythe (in the ramblin' bigamist I.O. Snopes); Virginia
Kelley (the chunky child bride Eula Varner); and Roger Clinton (the no-goodnik
Byron Snopes). Bill Clinton is apparently based on the main protagonist of the
three books, Flem Snopes. Flem rises from rural squalor, getting a job as a
clerk at Varner's store in Frenchman's Bend, then taking over the store, then
moving to the town of Jefferson. He aspires to become president (of the
Jefferson Bank) and succeeds. Alas, Faulkner captures the milieu of Gothic
dysfunction from which Clinton emerged but describes Flem's rise only in terms
of venality, missing the all-important element of idealism.
Philip
Roth: A closer match is found, surprisingly enough, in Philip's Roth's
portrait of a middle-aged Jewish intellectual. "Portnoy's complaint" is defined
on the first page of the novel of that name as "A disorder in which
strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with
extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature." Sound familiar? Alexander
Portnoy, after he outgrows his autoerotic obsession, works for the liberal John
Lindsay administration in New York City and does his best to demonstrate his
concern for the poor and the oppressed. Meanwhile, however, he is shacked up
with a girlfriend he calls the Monkey, who fulfills his sexual fantasies but
leaves him living in fear of tabloid scandal. Like Clinton, Portnoy is highly
intelligent, mother-obsessed, and pretty much out of control. Another
similarity: Portnoy flees to Israel when faced with crisis. Drawbacks: Portnoy
is more of a neurotic and less of a liar.
M ark Twain: My colleague Walter Shapiro
("Chatterbox") suggests that Clinton is a Tom Sawyer figure. He's thinking of
the famous fence-painting scene, in which Tom tricks his friends into paying
him for the right to do his chore. Tom Sawyer does capture rather nicely, I
think, Clinton's gift for talking his way out of trouble that better sense
might have kept him out of in the first place. Tom is, as Bob Kerrey once said
of Clinton, "an unusually good liar." There's also the great scene where Tom
and Huck Finn, who are thought to have drowned, watch their own funerals as
spectators. That's a bit like what Clinton seems to be doing now. We know that
he'll pop up at the end, Sawyer-like, to announce that, contrary to popular
belief, he is not, in fact, finished. Bonus: Hillary as Aunt Polly, who is
driven to distraction by Tom's deceptions but always forgives him in the
end.
Charles
Dickens: The great artist of character types is Dickens, but he seems
never to have drawn anyone much like Bill Clinton. Republicans might propose
Uriah Heep in David Copperfield . Heep, synonymous with unctuousness, is
a fawning fellow who worms his way up through oozing manipulation. He does have
some Clinton-like traits, such as his obsession with his mother, his
smarminess, and his flattering blather. There's a scene in the novel where
Copperfield sees Heep asleep, with his "mouth open like a post office." The
phrase fits Clinton beautifully. But Heep is repellant. Clinton, though hated
by many, is seductively charming. Newt Gingrich, as he was getting clobbered in
budget negotiations in 1995-96, said he "had to go through detox" to prevent
himself from being overcome by Clinton's winning ways. Heep is, however, a fine
stand-in for the House Majority Whip, Tom DeLay of Texas.
H erman Melville: At an anti-impeachment
rally this week, the novelist Mary Gordon suggested that Clinton was in fact
Billy Budd. "There is something about a kind of accusation that takes on a life
of its own in which a punishment is completely incommensurate with the nature
of the crime that comes from a sort of sexual madness that I believe is at the
root of a lot of the otherwise incomprehensible opposition to Clinton," Gordon
noted. This is a clever nomination, but it doesn't transcend the immediate
circumstances of the scandal. Melville's Budd is a naive, good man who is
punished unfairly for an accidental murder he is provoked into committing by
someone who tried to frame him for a crime. Clinton's impending punishment may
be unjust, but as a character he lacks Billy's innocence and forthrightness.
Billy steps up to take his undeserved punishment, declining to let others risk
their necks by trying to help him. Clinton has consistently done pretty much
the opposite. Gordon may be on to something with the issue of sexual jealousy,
but neglects the key difference: Budd is lusted after; Clinton lusts. However,
there's a silver lining in this one, too. In Claggart, the officer who tries to
frame Billy for the crime of mutiny, we find a nautical version of Kenneth
Starr.
F. Scott
Fitzgerald: While we're considering unlikely comparisons from American
literature, we have a proposal from Joe Klein, the author of a fine fictional
portrait of Clinton--Jack Stanton in Primary Colors . Klein once wrote of
Bill and Hillary: "They are the Tom and Daisy Buchanan of the Baby Boom
Political Elite. The Buchanans, you may recall, were F. Scott Fitzgerald's
brilliant crystallization of flapper fecklessness in The Great Gatsby .
They were 'careless' people. They smashed up lives and didn't notice." There
are some surprisingly good parallels here. Tom Buchanan avoided service in
World War I and is a reckless adulterer. But as a personality, he's all
wrong--he's a bully and a racist who doesn't care what anyone else thinks about
him. And Tom and Daisy are aristocrats; their miserable behavior is the
outgrowth of his having too much money, the one thing Clinton has never had and
has never seemed to care much about.
L ewis Carroll: The
indispensable guides to contemporary politics are Alice in Wonderland
and Through the Looking Glass , which happens to be where Clinton's most
direct literary antecedent appears. Coming upon an egg-shaped man, Alice
wonders why someone so fragile would sit on such a high and narrow wall. Humpty
Dumpty explains that he can always be put back together again in the event of
an accident. Further discussion ensues, reminiscent of Clinton's Paula Jones
deposition and his grand jury testimony:
"When I use a
word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I
choose it to mean--neither more nor less."
"The question is," said
Alice, "whether you CAN make words mean so many different things."
"The
question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."
Alice has a predictable
reaction to this sophistry:
"Of all the unsatisfactory
people I EVER met--"
She never finished the
sentence, for at this moment a heavy crash shook the forest from end to
end.
