CLINTON AND ME. Copyright © 2000, 2001 by Michael Graham. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
For information address Hachette Book Group, USA, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017, Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.
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ISBN: 978-0-7595-2450-7
First eBook Edition: September 2001
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
How Bill Clinton Changed My Life
Chapter One
Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
Clinton and Me
They Say It’s Your Birthday
Justice Under the Dashboard Lights
Believe It or Not
Teacher’s Pet
My Grandpa, the Nazi
Clinton and Me, Part Two
Chapter Two
The Era of Big Government Is Over
Brother Dearest
Guru to You, Too
Keyed Up
B.M.O.C.
Olympics of the Damned
Jesse Goes to Hollywood
A Southern Man
Chapter Three
The Most Ethical Administration in American History
Just Say No
To Di For
God’s Punch Line
Impeach Reno
These Kids Today
The Life of Riley
White House Follies
Chapter Four
“I Did Not Have Sex with That Woman”
End of the Presidency
President O.J.
Thinking with Your Clinton
Dead Kennedys
Thank God for Racism
The Will of the People
What Do Women Want?
Silver Linings
Chapter Five
The Meaning of the Word Is
Dear Hil
Clinton for Dummies
Vice and Its Victims
If It’s Broke, Don’t Fix It
Talkin’ the Talk
The Yankees Are Coming!
Don’t Mess with My Toot-Toot
The Envelope, Please
Chapter Six
“A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”
What’d I Say?
Loco
Keeping Score
Dead Foreigners
President Clarence
Contempt!
Bad Boys, Bad Boys
Curse of the Kennedys
Discriminatory Practices
Who’s for Jesus?
Reverend Jesse Jackson, Where Are You?
Chapter Seven
One of Our Greatest Presidents
Bush League
Winning the Battle, Losing the War
Barney Fife’s Revenge
What About Bob?
Who’s Sorry Now?
Stop Making Census
School Choice
Somebody’s Gonna Get Hurt
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Mothers
Rudy, Rudy, Rudy
The Million-Dollar Question
My Life as a Fashion Plate
It Is . . .
Afterword
An Open Letter to America on Election Day 2024
Also by Michael Graham
Banned from Public Radio
To my Menckens:
H. L., the greatest American newspaperman of the twentieth century, who revealed the secrets of Clintonism more than fifty years ago: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it . . . good and hard.”
And my eldest son, Mencken Powell Graham, who showed up just in time to see all the fun.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * *
This book simply would not have been possible without the help of:
Amy, John, Noel, Stephanie, Margaret and the other publishers and editors who have shown tremendously poor judgment by publishing my work;
Randall, who gave me my first job in talk radio and has been trying unsuccessfully to get me to shut up ever since;
Colin at Warner Books, who, along with Richard, Mary, Pete, Janna, Oran, and (especially) J. Mark, offered timely advice on the contents herein;
John, my fellow curmudgeon, who got this whole mess started with the seemingly innocent comment “Hey, you ever thought about writing a book?”;
But most of all, my wife, Jennifer, aka “the Warden,” a wonderful mother, a skilled copyeditor, an outstanding grammarian, and one hot [deleted on final edit].
This book is entirely their fault. Like the president, I accept no responsibility whatsoever.
PREFACE
* * *
How Bill Clinton Changed My Life
God, I’m going to miss him.
I, Michael Graham, a southern-born, right-wing, pro-life, school-choice, Second Amendment, abstinence-based, laissez-faire, Laffer-curve, let-them-eat-cake Reagan Republican of the first order, would be willing to suspend the Constitution just to keep Bill Clinton around.
In 1992, when Clinton and his saxophone burst on the American scene, I proudly cast my vote against him. Now that the Clinton show is tentatively scheduled to close January 20, 2001 (with this guy, you never know), I can hardly bear to see him go.
For starters, he’s not Al Gore. Al Gore—who combines the politics of Ralph Nader with the ethics of Richard Nixon—has all the venal ambition and grating self-righteousness of Bill Clinton, but none of the offsetting charm.
Watching Al Gore campaign for president is like watching a teenage boy trying to get laid: He’s working so hard, and he wants it so bad, but you’re not sure anybody’s going to enjoy it much if he actually gets the chance.
With President Clinton, it’s the opposite: You know you’re going to enjoy it; you’re just not sure you should.
I’ve enjoyed the Clinton presidency thoroughly, and for so many different reasons. It’s been great for me economically, and I don’t mean that in the Clinton “I single-handedly rescued the economy from Ronald Reagan’s eight straight years of economic growth” sense of the phrase. I literally owe my career (such as it is) as a former political operative and current columnist and radio talk show host to the Clinton administration. And I am confident there are thousands of other Americans (Internet gossips, IRS investigators, chastity belt manufacturers) who can say the same thing.
What better time to be in the business of political conversation than when the hottest media star in the nation lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? How lucky am I to have a president who turns me into a successful humorist every time I merely quote him accurately?
And Bill Clinton single-handedly made me a radio talk show host. My first night on the air was the same night the Washington Post broke the Monica story.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa. . . .
Before Bill Clinton, talk show hosts spent hours trying to find ways to make the inner workings of democracy interesting to the average American. My first week in talk radio, my listeners and I spent hours trying to find polite ways to describe what Monica Lewinsky was doing under the president’s desk (first runner-up, “face time”; winner, “hailing the little chief”).
Bill Clinton forever answered the question “How do you get Americans engaged in their political system?” Answer: Drop your pants!
My fellow conservatives and I have had a great time pounding the president over his cigar-handling antics. But I don’t think my fellow conservatives fully appreciate how much Bill Clinton has done for our cause.
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sp; I remember a conversation back in the Reagan years, when I was living in New York City. I was talking to a moderate NYC Democrat (he was a Marxist) about why I distrusted government. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely! The government that governs best governs least! Fight the power!”
He was unimpressed. “Government isn’t any worse than big business or anyone else,” he insisted. “I’ve never seen politicians act as corrupt or selfish or power-hungry as you keep saying they do.”
I hope he’s been paying attention.
We conservatives should thank Bill Clinton for demonstrating in real life the kind of shameless, petty abuses of power that before we could only describe. Never again will mainstream Americans be able to say, “No president would ever do that!” Think about it: Can you imagine anything, literally anything, that this president would not do for the sake of his own political success?
I have written, in print and for broad publication, that if it would help him achieve his political ends, Bill Clinton would announce tomorrow that he is a lesbian.
I further maintain that 43 percent of the American voting public would believe him.
In the past, I might have written columns warning of a president’s theoretical use of the FBI and the IRS to pursue his enemies, or a parody of a president so desperate for campaign funds that he invited agents of Communist China over for tea, or a tribute to George Orwell suggesting that some politicians might not be sure of the definition of the word is.
Before President Clinton, all this would have been comedy. Today, it is history.
One last, personal note: Bill Clinton has had a real impact on my marriage. One can only speculate how many husbands of Arkansas state employees can make that same claim.
Like most men in their thirties, I’ve cavalierly spouted the nostrum “All men are pigs.” And for the most part, we are. But there is, deep inside us, some notion of—for lack of a better phrase—pig pride.
Do I know guys who’ve engaged in extramarital knee grabbing? Do I know bosses who give their attractive female assistants a few laps around the desk whenever possible? Of course. I know men like these because I know men.
But part of that view of manhood is the attendant sense of shame. The guys who break their vows and get caught understand that they are the bad guys. They’re ashamed of themselves, ashamed of what they’ve done and, most of all, ashamed of shaming their families.
If I were President Clinton and I had been caught playing Hide the Cuban with the office help—added to all the other lecheries now on the public record—there would have been no Starr investigation or impeachment proceedings or eye-rolling defenses by Jim Carville.
I would have been gone. Forget the law, as Monica’s ex-attorney might say. I would not have had the ego and arrogance to shame my family and show up for work the next day.
I know people make mistakes, and I am certainly not perfect. Knowing the way life goes, I fully anticipate reading the headline “South Carolina Commentator Caught with Goat in Cheap Motel” sometime after the publication of this book.
But I can say with all honesty that I have a deeper sense of the value of commitment and a clearer understanding of the importance of my family thanks to Bill Clinton. Name another politician you can say that about.
After eight years of Bill Clinton, the credibility of government is lower, my personal income is higher and my family is stronger than ever. Plus, I know seventeen new euphemisms for oral sex.
Damn, I am going to miss this guy.
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
Clinton and Me
* * *
January 1994
One year ago, the same week William Jefferson Clinton was sworn in as head of our national family, I became a father. I’m not sure which one of us was more nervous, but there were probably more pictures taken of me than of him that week.
While the president stood in the chilling January wind and delivered his inaugural address, I paced across a cold hospital floor with my newly delivered son, Mencken. As the president prayed for wisdom and strength to lead our nation, I prayed, too . . . prayed I wouldn’t drop him, that the odor seeping from his diaper was just gas, that he wouldn’t grow up to appear on a TV talk show (“Psycho killers and the parents who raise them—next on Jerry Springer”).
As is the case with President Clinton, most of the credit for my achievement must go to the dogged determination of my wife, who was promoting my rise to fatherhood by dumping her birth control products down the toilet while I wasn’t looking.
Behind every great man . . .
Also like the president, I was an unlikely nominee for my new leadership position. I had no previous experience, and I was hardly the consensus candidate of my wife’s family. Then there was the character issue. I have none. I am notoriously irresponsible, immature and negligent. I once had a Chia Pet taken into protective custody by the SPCA.
Add to that my lifelong dislike of children. I have always found their sounds, their voices, their very presence unbearable. Like W. C. Fields, I have long been admired for my hatred of dogs and babies: “Children,” I used to note, “should be steamed, not heard. And served with drawn butter.”
Were it not for my innate Bobbittophobia, I would have had a vasectomy long ago.
A poll of friends and family would have put the odds of my becoming a father about the same as those of Michael Jackson being named spokesman for Underoos. Or of an unknown Arkansas politico with an aversion to military service and a taste for coed slumber parties becoming commander in chief.
Nevertheless, in our first year, President Clinton and I approached the daunting tasks at hand with enthusiasm, if not competence. While the White House struggled to put together a cabinet, I discovered I had an ex officio child-rearing “kitchen cabinet” consisting of every female relative and/or co-worker my wife has ever known. While the president was distancing himself from long-forgotten fiascos such as Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood, I was trying to figure out how to get their tax-free nannies to move to South Carolina.
And as the president signed the Family Leave Bill, guaranteeing all loving parents the right to stay home with the little one, my wife was screaming, “If you think I’m staying trapped in this house with that twenty-decibel drool machine, you’re out of your mind!”
As the president’s poll numbers dropped, so did my confidence. Maybe I wasn’t the right man for the job. With household deficits rising due to the sudden surge in spending by the Department of Diapers and Bizarre Rash Ointments, I barely managed to push through my own budget proposal. Victory was ensured only after a hefty increase in the Anyone Who Has Worn the Same Smock for Nine Months Deserves All the New Clothes She Wants Fund.
But we stumbled forward, Clinton and me. Through the hot summer and the fading fall, the president and I refused to quit. Sure, there were embarrassing moments for both of us—fortunately, I don’t have Janet “Fireball” Reno to answer for.
President Clinton pushed past Ross Perot to get NAFTA, and I got Mencken to sleep through the night, proving we could both effectively handle baldish, goofy-looking whiners with big ears. Then came GATT and big fourth-quarter growth numbers and drinking from a cup and my first solo baby bath (no fatalities), and at the end of year one, it looks like things are turning around.
Are they? Who knows? The economy and children are both very resilient. It could be that they would flourish with or without our guidance. They are also very fickle, and the healthy growth of a well-fed youngster can quickly turn into the pitiful cry of a croupy child. We can only hope for the best.
So happy birthday, Mencken Graham, and congratulations on your first year, Mr. President. I was with you all the way.
Oh, and have you heard about the terrible twos?
They Say It’s Your Birthday
* * *
February 1996
In a few days, I will be as old as Jesus.
Our Lord and Savior surv
ived thirty-three years on this accursed sphere before the locals finally did him in (an ever-present reminder of why I oppose the death penalty, by the way). And this week I will turn thirty-three, which I’ve just discovered is the Age.
There is, I believe, for each of us, the one birthday we truly dread. It is the year by which we should have arrived, the date after which there can be no beginnings. It is a boundary marked in our biological clocks, the beginning of the end.
According to Hallmark card mythology, the c’est fini season is forty. You see it almost every day in the paper. The gang at the office chips in for a surprise ad on your fortieth birthday. You wake up in a foul mood, open the sports section and there’s a quarter-page print of your high school yearbook photo—an Opie look-alike with “Lordy, lordy, look who’s forty!” in large type underneath.
If any of my so-called friends ever did this to me, by the way, I’d give them a thorough prostate exam with the Sunday Parade section.
What’s interesting is how most of the people I know who’ve hit forty seem to have taken it in stride. Most of them tell me that the thirtieth birthday was tougher, or that sixty looks rough. The forties actually get pretty good reviews from survivors, some of whom even say life begins there. H. L. Mencken said, “The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.”
I can hardly wait.
Forty has gotten bad press because it serves as the portal of middle age, when you’ve supposedly reached the apogee of your lifeline and have fewer miles out your windshield than in your rearview mirror.
But since when is forty middle age? How many people do you know who make it to eighty? Unless your last name is Thurmond, middle age hits most of us in our mid- to late thirties . . . which means it’s sneaking up on me right now.
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