Bookraft

In a biting satire, James Wolcott describes how in the Fall of 2004, President Clinton heartlessly upstaged President Bush by going in for emergency heart surgery. Now life imitates comic art - as George Bush lurches from getting the US in one disaster after another, President Clinton is quietly upstaging him by assuming the real reins of power - credibility in the eyes of the world leaders, business men and thinkers.

And it all started innocently enough. Back in January of this year, Clinton and ex-President Bush were asked to lead the US Tsunami relief fund. This was yet another case where George jr got caught with his presidential understanding and reaction-pants down. George Sr. and Clinton got a long famously - and did manage to secure hundreds of millions of dollars and are credited with helping to shepherd funds to the right agencies and relief efforts.

Come Katrina and President Bush jr with his compassion pants even further down - and voila, look what is happening. George Sr and Bill Chapter II get called in as rescue team again. And even more so then before, Clinton is setting up 'lean mechanisms" to administer and make sure that the Katrina funds get to the poorest and neediest through local church groups and non-profit agencies. Wow, that is staying economic power.

The Coup de Grace

In a mid-September New York, George Bush, Kofi Annan, and other world leaders proved once again that the UN is a most cumbersome and messy institution - but like democracy, it is the best we have got. Bill Clinton's Global Initiative gathered 800 movers and shakers in New York at $15,000 a pop and that was just the first of it. Bill got people to pledge in writing over $800 million dollars to specific campaigns and aid movements throughout the world. Again, Bill's people will be following up on these pledges and actions. Talk about even more economic $ and idea-to-action power.

So Bungling Bush, in his efforts to coddle his strange alliance of the ultra-aristocratic rich (their tax breaks are still protected depite enormous debt loads) and the generally economically stretched morally right-eous (righteous Supreme Court, no stem cell research, Christian praying rights but I am not too sure about any others, etc) ; George continues to lurch from one disaster to another. In stark contrast, Bill Clinton is looking like the defacto, counter President. Bill is also gaining enormous political power because he is proving that a compassionate Liberal can trump a so-called "uniter, not divider", a Rovian populist attack dog conservative just by means of the concentrated finesse of getting possible good things actually done.

Will this lay the ground work for addressing some of the World's Wicked problems - which, when another explodes in his face, George Bush jr will end up repeating some variation of 'who could have connected the dots or guessed that the levees would fail ." ? Possibly. Will this allow Bill Clinton to accrue tremendous political power for the 2006 and 2008 elections ? Indeed it will.

(c)JBSurveyer 2005