A Rant for the Day

The Washington Post reports that Bill Clinton thinks Presidential term limits should be changed. He thinks that a young president who does his two terms should have a chance to be re-elected in the future, if the people should suddenly have a need that only he can fill ("I got a great corkscrew"). And of course, he's totally and completely not talking about himself. And Nixon wasn't talking about anything illegal during that 18-minute gap. Did we really give this clown eight years in the White House?





I know, I know, surprise, surprise. What else is Clinton going to say? But that's just it. What else is Clinton going to do, for the rest of his pork-rind-inhaling existence, than make statements about being President, about how the Presidency has affected his life, about his time as President and what the current President should be doing. He's going to be a lame duck for the next thirty or forty years, an endlessly running mouth. Which ordinarily wouldn't bother me, as endlessly running mouths are the single largest product of our media industry. But Billy-Boy is a $200,000-a-year endlessly running mouth. At taxpayer expense.





There used to be a time when politics was something you briefly did to serve the res publica, and then you went back to your farm or business or whatever you were running before you mounted your soapbox. Thomas Jefferson had no shortage of things to do when he was done in Washington. Is it unreasonable for us to expect Bill Clinton to find a legitimate line of work? He's climbed the cursus honorum of American politics already. Go back to Arkansas and find a big-haired girlfriend, will you? Or renounce your womanizing and be a good house-husband for Hillary, picking out fabric swatches and pestering the butler with stories about all those jobs you "created." I don't care. Just leave us alone.





While I'm huffing, when did this Presidential Library thing happen? Did Washington have a Presidential Library? Lincoln? Either Roosevelt? What petty glorification of the Commander-in-Chief is this? I can't imagine why anyone would think we needed to have every stately nuance of the Johnson Administration (Motto: "I Fought the Poverty, and the Poverty Won") set down for posterity. All of this Solemnity and Grandeur with regard to the Presidency merely balloons it into something it oughtn't be. The man is our employee, the COO we pick to keep the coasts defended and the money supply honest. Everything else is bullcorn.