A Clever Fellow, to Be Sure, but Clueless About Character

"Survivor: Little Rock" -- the reality TV show with only one contestant -- is back. Bubba Bill is once again transfixing the nation with the psychodrama that is his life and times. The ex-prez wants us to know that he's been trying to figure out the source of the "demons" that led him into a dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. Not surprisingly, he's located the wellsprings of his childish behavior in his childhood. That's nice for him. But he still doesn't have a clue why he became every right-winger's favorite pinata.

Asked by Dan Rather why so many people hate him, clueless Clinton replied: "I've always tried to change things. And people who try to be change agents are going to make people mad against the changes you're trying to make."

Change things? What was it exactly that Bill Clinton tried to change? He came in with grandiose plans to nationalize healthcare and allow gays to serve in the military. Neither one got anywhere, and, in the case of healthcare, it was hard to tell whether Bill cared that much; that was Hillary's deal. Thereafter Clinton became the status quo president. He presided over a bunch of micro-reforms engineered by Dick Morris -- feel-good ideas like encouraging school uniforms and discouraging teen smoking. This was grandly known as "triangulation," or the Third Way.

A less charitable way to put it would be that Clinton was doing as little as possible so as to offend as few people as possible. It worked like a charm; he coasted to a second term. But that doesn't make him a change agent, much less one who would offend anyone to the right of Michael Moore. His biggest change, after all, was welfare reform: not exactly the kind of thing that gets the boys down at National Review all riled up.

Clinton's presidency ("The era of big government is over!") essentially ratified the huge transformations wrought by Ronald Reagan. Now there was a genuine change agent. Reagan was hated by the left for all the right reasons. Franklin D. Roosevelt was another change agent; he earned the enmity of the right by launching the era of big government.

The mystery of Clinton is that he was an essentially conservative president -- perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the White House since Grover Cleveland -- and yet he was loathed by conservatives. So much so that he was accused of all sorts of awful things he didn't actually do, from murdering Vince Foster to being in cahoots with the Chinese. I don't blame Clinton for getting a tad upset about the nutty accusations tossed his way and for not being able to figure out what a good ole boy with a saxophone and a smile had ever done to justify such venom.