The Comeback Kid has done it again. In the span of less than a month, he’s managed to dominate a presidential election in which he’s not even on the ballot. Bill Clinton is to politics what Frank Sinatra was to music, a man so gifted that he charms even those people who hate him. Republicans who once impeached him now sing his praises. Mitt Romney is actually funny in his presence. Barbara Bush calls him the son she never had (and wishes she did). And I go from gay to questioning every time I hear him speak.
Who is this man? Is he a silver-tongued devil or a silver-haired saint? Is it possible to be both?
I have a theory about Bill. I think he’s our national mirror. We stare at him and see all the flaws in ourselves and yet still find a reason to be hopeful. We don’t stop thinking about tomorrow because Bill refuses to let the past matter. He’s the perfect reflection of the best angels of our nature precisely because he’s not perfect. He didn’t inhale (who did?), he didn’t have sex with that woman (because he actually redefined sex, the same way I did as a Catholic school girl, FYI), and he’s made the ex-presidency into his third and fourth terms. Eat your heart out, FDR.
I love Bill Clinton with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. And I predict that in four years he will become the first man to be the country’s first man. Finally, the right lesson to the girls of America: behind every great woman is a great man (or another great woman)!
(Photo: Getty Images)
