-Caveat Lector-
Daily Telegraph-Thursday 14 December 2000
Clinton felt everybody's pain - except the Unionists'
By Boris Johnson
TALK about a marmalade-dropper. If the photograph hadn't appeared
in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, I would have told you it was a
hoax. It seems only the other day that we were warning of the
corruption of even talking to the IRA. Men such as Adams and
McGuinness were apologists for terror, and even if they didn't
have the blood of innocents on their hands, they spoke for those
who did. And then it felt like only a matter of a few months
before the pair of them were welcomed to the White House by Bill
Clinton; and next, in the face of all the outrage we could
muster, Bill went to Belfast and shook hands with Gerry Adams,
live, on camera.
One day Adams was an officially designated monster, a man who
refused to condemn every bomb from Birmingham to Manchester,
whose words could not be broadcast on the BBC. In a blink, he was
having his hand pumped in a Belfast cafe by the leader of the
free world. And then yesterday, what happens? We are just about
learning to accept that Martin McGuinness, whose organisation has
killed so many children, has been appointed a minister for
education in the government of the United Kingdom. It has been
hard to stomach, but we are coping. Then we get this.
The picture looks a bit grainy. There is a snatched, illicit
feel to it, a bit like one of those telephoto shots of Bill
sharing a private moment with Monica. But there is no doubt about
it: Martin McGuinness is being kissed by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
And she kissed Gerry Adams, too. There was McGuinness, the man
who, according to an intelligence source codenamed Infliction,
fired the first shot on Bloody Sunday, receiving the full
mwah-mwah treatment from the President's wife, as though he was
some kind of Hollywood contributor to Democratic funds.
What an amazing rehabilitation: first, they are the scum of the
earth, reviled by all except Gaddafi; then they are being
slobbered over by the First Lady. One wonders how it was created,
this strange euphoric mood in which kissing a convicted IRA man
is not only acceptable, but an occasion for applause. What is it
that brings sentimental tears to these Irish eyes, not just at
the great Guinness-fuelled blarney-fest in Dublin, but on both
sides of the border?
Partly it is the fact of "peace", and people's justifiable sense
of relief that the bombs and the bullets have slackened off. But
very largely it is something to do with Clinton himself, and the
touchy-feely bow-wave of charisma he brings with him. Look at
those crowds in the Dublin bar, pressing to touch the hem of his
coat, joyful at the sight of him buying his round, like a regular
guy. Talk to anyone who has been in the room with him, and they
will confirm his preternatural gift of empathy, his willing you
to believe that he is on your side.
When Bill Clinton is brought to the bar of history, as opposed
to that of Kitty O'Shea's in Dublin, there will be good and bad
things to be said on his behalf, and now, after eight years, it
is time to have a first stab. I do not join those who loathe him
for the Monica business; he may have lied, but he was asked a
ridiculous question.
He has not made a hash of the US economy; far from it. He
followed James Rubin in bringing down the deficit, so permitting
continuously low interest rates, a policy that has been
profitably imitated by Gordon Brown. Perhaps it is true that a
hard landing is now in the offing; but we have heard that before
over the past three years, and Clinton cannot be entirely
dissociated from the longest boom on record.
He may have had his share of foreign policy foul-ups, from the
Middle East to Somalia to Kosovo, but, 11 years after the fall of
the Berlin Wall, there is still only one superpower. You may
think he is a phoney, and you may even think he was responsible
for bumping off Vince Foster and running drugs into Arkansas. But
I quite admire the way he has been the first US president to
reduce his golf handicap while in office.
What makes me feel uneasy about Clinton, and prevents me from
calling him a great president, is that the very charm he uses to
light up a room, and which prompts an ex-IRA man and a First Lady
to start their bacchic smooching, is also the utensil by which he
evades and manipulates. What is his mission in Ulster, which was
not, the last time I looked, part of the United States? He must
be here not just to "claim his place in history", but also
because he sees that Irish votes are important for Hillary in New
York. That is why, yet again, he is creating a candyfloss
illusion for the Unionists. What is behind the choked appeals for
peace, that both sides should have the courage to "jump
together"?
It is a nauseating attempt to create a moral equivalence between
the disarmament of the IRA (which was meant to be, successively
and abortively, the precondition of talks, then of the new
institutions, then of prisoner releases) and the withdrawal of
the Army. Look at Clinton's chipmunk chin, the pushing-out of the
lower lip that is meant to connote modesty and sincerity. Note
how often Blair imitates it. What Clinton really brought to
politics was the I-feel-your-pain humbug of the Third Way.
Like Blair, Clinton has been the economic beneficiary of the
conservative governments that preceded him. He has added his own
extraordinary gifts of self-dramatisation and empathy. What will
happen to the Third Way without Clinton? It didn't work for Al
Gore. What will Blair do, when he has lost the master he studied
so closely? He could try encouraging Cherie to kiss Martin
McGuinness, but I'm not sure that she would oblige. Not in
public; not yet, anyway.
Boris Johnson is editor of the Spectator
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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