Bewildered Bill's Ironic Presidency

 Originally published in the New Jersey Herald, January 24, 1999.

            Irony is a cheap commodity, but it does add color and texture to our current political tempest.  For example, Bill Clinton has admitted to sexual misconduct in office, and at the same time he has fought for the right of women to be protected from bosses who use their authority for sexual favors.

            And it doesn’t seem to matter if Monica Lewinsky pursued him or he pursued her because in today’s world, ironically shaped largely by Bill Clinton, men guilty of such irresponsible sexual behavior in the workplace are fired.  And it hasn’t passed anyone’s notice that our baby boomer peace president has launched more than one timely military action.  More irony. 

            It is not ironic, however, that the country seems to be standing behind its beleaguered president.  The nation’s largest population group is Clinton’s own boomer generation, and they stand steadfastly behind one of their own.  They recall the counter-culture movement of the ‘60s and the sexual freedoms they fought to establish against a Silent Majority of Puritan moralizers.  It was their work that challenged sodomy laws and evicted the government from the bedrooms of consenting adults.  It was the boomers who faced down Richard Nixon.  No, it makes perfect sense that the boomer generation should stand behind Bill Clinton.

            The self-indulgent motto of the boomers in the old days, of course, was “if it feels good, do it.”  And the central tenet of their creed was “don’t trust anyone over 30,” no doubt because their elders (the hated GI generation) were getting in the way of their pleasures:  sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.

            But there were other, better, reasons for the generational conflict.  GI elders were also mismanaging the Vietnam war and standing in the way of civil rights.  The boomers resisted their “mean-spirited” GI fathers at every turn, and the result was the most pronounced, rancorous, and painful Generation Gap in American history.

            Thinking they had won the political war of the century, the boomers were galled at the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the 12 years of Republican rule that followed, although huge numbers of them traded in their tie-dye outfits for three-piece suits to capitalize on the economic boom that was dawning. 

            But to put up with the dismantlement of government programs for the poor and the reestablishment of the primacy of the defense budget was more than they could tolerate.  They fumed until they saw a beatable George Bush in 1992 and elected one of their own, a charming Democrat from Arkansas.  And he espoused all the Democratic liberal policies they had been longing for since Richard Nixon’s resignation.  Bill Clinton was the triumph of an entire generation.

            Today, six years into his presidency, he is aided in his impeachment crisis by the very fact of his incumbency, plus the nearly undisputed right of people to conduct their sexual lives as they wish.  Further bolstered by a huge 60 percent approval ratings from the people who elected him, Bill Clinton seems virtually invincible.

            His opponents, like Bob Dole in the last election, are depicted by the boomer Left as doddering old men from an era that was disgraced and beaten in the ‘60s and are now being resurrected for one last-ditch fight between the generations.  Impeachment 1999 has the eerie feel of history repeating itself.

            Of course it oversimplifies to see all Republicans as a new manifestation of the GI generation and all Democrats as the embodiment of the boomer generation, but there are enough of the old stereotypes left for the comparison to have some usefulness.

            The “older generation,” still sick at heart over the way the country has drifted morally ever since the ’60s, looks for redemption.  The “younger generation” with newly rediscovered moral righteousness, is digging its heels in for a new fight, the glory days come again.

            Played out some 40 years after its first curtain, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton is actually the final act in a historical drama filled with pious protestations and political bloodshed.  Heart-pounding generational conflict, a hallmark of the tense 1960s, has once again taken center stage.  But it’s ironic that the millennium, thick with portent and doom should be ending on such slender stuff as Monicagate.