Occam’s Razor

Needed: a dose of reality for presidential daughters (and sons)

Those of us who watched The West Wing were treated to a fictional, yet likely accurate portrayal of the life of presidential offspring. Viewers best knew the fictional President Bartlet’s daughter Zoey. At the end of Season Four, she was kidnapped on the night of her graduation from Georgetown University. She also prominently dated Bartlet’s very African American personal aid, Charlie Young. Both of these events caused end of season cliffhangers.

From The West Wing we learn that the gilded life is not necessarily easy for presidential offspring. The Secret Service is omnipresent, making it very difficult to maintain privacy and the semblance of a personal life. There is also the ever-curious press corps, who likes to read into the president defects they detect in their offspring. Like modern day princes, these presidential sons and daughters are thrust into a role not of their choosing. Moreover, once their famous parent leaves office, they often become curiosities. Like Amy Carter, sometime they are banished to obscurity. However, if they are particularly smart, good-looking and their parents are well connected they can end up earning six figures right out of college.

Chelsea Clinton has a new job, the Associated Press reports. The 26-year-old former first daughter recently started working for Avenue Capital Group, a New York-based hedge fund that handles about $12 billion in assets.

Clinton had been working as a consultant for McKinsey & Co., the international consulting firm, since 2003, reportedly for a six-figure salary. She received her master’s degree from Oxford University after graduating from Stanford in 2001.

Federal campaign records indicate that Avenue Capital founders Marc Lasry and Sonia Gardner have donated thousands of dollars to Democratic lawmakers, including Chelsea Clinton’s mother, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as to various Democratic campaign committees. There was no word late yesterday from Avenue Capital, any of the Clintons or their reps.

Arguably, Chelsea was simply astute enough to turn the detriment of being a presidential daughter into an asset. If you Google Chelsea’s name, you will find that she has been a busy daughter in the six years since her father left office. After finishing high school at the exclusive Sidwell Friends School in Washington, she received a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford, where she commendably graduated with highest honors. She recently received a degree in international relations from Oxford University, which her father also attended. Ironically, she now lives in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. It is just a bit north of the current residence of another presidential daughter: Barbara Pierce Bush, who lives in Greenwich Village. I have to wonder if they occasionally get together for cappuccinos at Starbucks.

Granted, the cost of living is very high in New York City. Even so, Chelsea Clinton’s six-figure salary, given that she is a 26-year-old woman with a master’s degree and is not a lawyer is virtually unheard of. Bill Clinton earned only $30,000 a year as the governor of Arkansas, and that was after spending some time as a professor at the University of Arkansas and unsuccessfully running for Congress. It does not take much to infer that Chelsea’s comfortable salary was due in large part to her parental connections. It also does not hurt that she is a very attractive woman. Presumably, she carries a premium for both her good looks and parental connections. I assume this was the reasoning behind McKinsey & Co. offering her such an inflated salary. Reports suggest she has the Clinton charisma. She may be the next generation of a future Clinton political dynasty.

Like Chelsea, President Bush’s twin daughters Jenna and Barbara are also cute and attractive. Unlike Chelsea, they never properly lived at the White House. Both were 18 when Bush was elected and just beginning college. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Jenna laudably spent some time teaching in public schools in the District of Columbia. Her twin sister Barbara chose to attend Yale, which her father and grandfather attended. Perhaps this was done in part to keep the Bush legacy at Yale alive for another generation.

However, both Bush daughters have had their issues with the law. Barbara and Jenna were charged with being a minor in possession of alcohol at a Mexican restaurant in May 2001. Jenna had a similar incident at an Austin bar a month earlier. In addition, The Washington Post reported in 2002 that the Bush girls were spotted (but not cited for) drinking at a Washington DC nightclub. Having spent some time recently pondering genograms, I have to wonder if the Bush twins have been channeling their father’s issues with alcohol and parental authority. Time will tell. While nominally Republican, both act more like Democrats.

Of Jack and Jackie Kennedy’s children, John Jr. became a glamorous assistant attorney in New York. He attracted a lot of press, but never became a politician. Perhaps this was because, like his father, he died young. He died in 1999 at age 39 (along with his wife and sister-in-law) when he piloted a piper cub into the Atlantic. The crash was thought to be due to his inexperience piloting aircraft. Caroline, the sole surviving child of the Kennedy marriage and now technically an orphan, is politically active in a few of her father’s causes. She is one of the founders of the Profiles in Courage Award. She is a graduate of both Harvard and the Columbia Law School. Her modest life seems a sensible response to her family’s tragic tendencies.

What is true about all these people is that it was difficult for them to encounter the real world. Chelsea Clinton probably enjoyed the most freedom, until her father ran for president. All have enjoyed both the perquisites and the detriments of being offspring to the president of the United States. Their lives were changed forever.

For me this background makes the case of Amy Carter so interesting. I have already confessed my admiration for Jimmy Carter. There was no cushy private school for Amy when the Carters were in the White House; she went to D.C. public schools. Her relatively normal entry into adulthood was perhaps assisted by the public’s general disdain for her father. The Carters were determined not to give their daughter any special favor. Amy fell into obscurity.

The last of the Carter’s three children (her two brothers were 15-20 years older, so they were adults when Carter was in office), Amy’s post White House life was frightfully ordinary. She too went to college, but to “ordinary” colleges like the Memphis College of Art and Tulane University. After her collegiate experience, she was left to fend for herself. As I recall from press reports, she worked in a bookstore to make ends meet. However, she has been politically active. She participated in various sit-ins on issues including apartheid in South Africa and the Reagan Administrations policies in Central America. She dallied on her way to the altar, not marrying until she was 29. She refused to be “given away” at her wedding, and has retained her maiden name. She is currently raising one son with her husband, and is avoiding the limelight.

I suspect over time that some of these presidential offspring will be running for higher office too. Perhaps it is in their blood, or they picked up the expectation watching their parents. I can sense thirty years from now there may be another Senator Clinton in the Senate. However, I am leery about all of these glamorous and often pampered next generation politicians running future ships of state. Our current president perhaps demonstrates that political dynasties tend to be bad ideas. Those who run the ship of state should be people grounded in real life. Arguably, because George W. Bush was not, it contributed to his singular view of the world and the disaster that now is Iraq. Iraq would have never have happened on Bill Clinton’s watch. Bill Clinton certainly came with many faults. He is also quite brilliant and has an amazingly flexible mind. I personally was thrilled at his election. Any man who took at much joy in a burger and fries from Burger King as he did could get my vote. For my money, he was grounded in the real world. He may have come from trailer park trash, but this and his intelligence gave him the insight to deal effectively with people. It may also be one of the reasons he was so despised. The same is true with Jimmy Carter. Both rose above their modest circumstances and in so doing, became very effective politicians.

So if we must have political dynasties, I am keeping one finger crossed behind my back. It is not crossed for a future Senator or President Chelsea Clinton, but instead for a future Senator or President Amy Carter. Amy’s life at least was grounded in some reality, despite being the president’s daughter. It appears that there are no coattails from her father’s term in office on which to run. However, I would rest easier with her steering the ship of state.

I bet Amy enjoys a burger with fries too.

November 24th, 2006 at 06:46pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

It’s the Bushes vs. the Clintons

I am sure I am not the only one intrigued by this USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll. For the first time this poll suggests that if Hillary Clinton were to run for president in 2008 a majority of Americans today would vote for her. Of course it’s a long way from 2008. The last we had heard from Hillary Clinton she had expressed no desire to run for the presidency in 2008. But Americans are clearly warming up to Hillary Clinton. Although she still commands high negatives from highly partisan Republicans she is increasingly embraced not just by Democrats but also by Independents.

And no wonder. For many of us Hillary Clinton is one classy, articulate, respected and balanced woman. Unlike our current bumbling and oafish president, Hillary, like her husband, is articulate. She connects with broad sections of America. She is poised and has a certain gravitas. Rather than being extreme, she is seen as mainstream. Although arguably she comes from a family of some wealth and privilege, politics were never her primary calling. In her case this plays to her advantage, and makes a plausible case that she is in politics to help people. The vast majority of politicians are far more into boosting their ego and strutting their power than helping ordinary Americans.

She has made a few political mistakes along the way. She was instrumental in her husband’s national health insurance task force. Pilloried at the time in that role her actions now seem foresighted. Twelve years later more Americans lack health insurance than ever. The costs for those of us fortunate enough to have it increasingly are going through the roof. She is also widely remembered for her remarks about a “vast right wing conspiracy” against her husband. While the conspiracy remark was likely hyperbole, in retrospect there were certainly lots of connected and partisan Republicans busy sharing notes and dirt about the Clintons. Particularly as we watched the triumph of neoconservatism in the last two presidential elections and the clearly bogus case for war against Iraq, her hyperbole no longer seems quite so fantastic. Politicians not beyond making a false case to take this nation into war would have no qualms about pushing lies about the Clintons.

As the junior senator from New York she has made a mark for herself in the Senate by being both tactful and assertive. It would be hard to find anything she has done in her five years as a senator that has hit an off note. She pushes for common sense progressive policies yet she is clearly for a solid national defense. She bends over backward to accommodate Israeli interests. In New York State she is very popular among her constituents, in spite of being a relative outsider. Even her archenemy Newt Gingrich has found many things to admire about Hillary Clinton.

Should Clinton try to run for the presidency we could expect the usual vitriol and dirty tricks from the Republican Party. However, it will be tough to find mud that will stick to Hillary. Unlike her husband, she isn’t a philanderer. She comes across as pragmatic and sincere: the real deal unlike her duplicitous husband. Republicans will likely be successful in whipping up their base. But their base is only so large and the number of independent voters are increasing. That still leave a fair number of Republican women who, if they don’t particularly like Clinton, at least respect her. Some of the progressive and moderate ones will even vote for her.

Democrats that have been polled about potential candidates for 2008 prefer Hillary more than two to one over other likely candidates. So should she choose to run for president it is likely that she would find a natural base of support within her party. Others have suggested that if she had a running mate like General Wesley Clark the ticket would be unbeatable.

The animosity toward the Clintons is easily understood in retrospect. Bill Clinton demonstrated that he could peel apart Southern states through a combination of a good old boy persona and middle of the road stances. This frustrated the Republican Party during a decade that was otherwise very good for them politically. In particular they were frustrated in their aspirations to fill the federal benches with conservatives. As the party of the black and white thinkers they could not deal with a politician who changed his opinions. But mostly, aside from Bill Clinton’s moral failings, he was an extremely deft politician. With a few exceptions Bill was able to dodge around every one of the traps laid for him by his opponents, and the traps were voluminous.

I think in retrospect the Clinton years will be seen with much nostalgia. They were prosperous years for most Americans. During the 1990s we had the longest peaceful expansion of the economy in history. We had nearly a decade of real wage growth and higher stock markets. That has not been the case during Bush’s tenure. While many would argue that September 11th changed everything, it is hard to argue with many other statistics that show overall employment barely changed from when Bush took office. Overall the stock market indices are still down considerably from where they stood 2000. If there was Clinton fatigue in 2000 it will be Bush fatigue, or anyone who sounds or acts like Bush, in 2008. Most likely the Republicans won’t be nimble enough to understand this. Rather than pick someone relatively mainstream like John McCain they are more likely to pick someone from the neoconservative and religious base of the party like Bill Frist. This makes Democratic prospects for recapturing the presidency in 2008 good regardless of the Republican candidate.

But on some other level Bush’s father’s defeat in 1992 by Bill Clinton wounded the pride of the Bush family. And since that election there has been the need to even scores. Bush’s second term win showed that he could do what his father could not. However Bill Clinton also won successive terms. At the end of Bush’s term there will be a total of two Clinton terms and three Bush terms, if you count Bush’s father. What to do for an encore?

Hillary’s successful run for the presidency would settle the score. Should she win a second term then it would be Clintons 4, Bushes 3. But it is likely that brother Jeb would want to try a run for the presidency himself at some point. Should Jeb succeed there is no real response, unless Chelsea decides to take up politics like her parents.

But should Hillary win the presidency, in addition to being the first woman to ever win the presidency, many would perceive her win as the triumph of Clinton progressivism over Bush neoconservatism. As I noted after the last election even though Bush won by the time his term is over he will have wished he had lost. Should Hillary run and win the presidency in 2008 then mainstream and clear thinking policies will have returned to the Oval Office. And hopefully after suffering the Bush and Reagan follies through 20 of the last 28 years, voters will finally understand the real value in electing progressives.

May 30th, 2005 at 11:56am Posted by Mark | Politics 2005 | one comment

Missing Bubba

We all knew there was something disingenuous about Bill Clinton. He wasn’t quite what he appeared. While he didn’t have Richard Nixon’s shiftiness there was always the sense that there was a lot more to Bill Clinton than met the eye. What we saw was the tip of his iceberg. Only occasionally and with great reluctance would he reveal his seamy and complex underside.

Clinton was the master politician of his generation. While he spun in circles his first few years in office he eventually found sure footing then went into a fast sprint. Despite his personal scandal by the time he left office I (and 57% of the country) was genuinely sad to see him leave. I am even sadder now after four years of George W. Bush. Loathe him or love him Bill Clinton was one of us. You knew his tastes were as pedestrian as yours. The three hundred dollar haircuts and the omnipresent blue suits were a veneer. We knew it. The real Bill Clinton was a guy who could revel in a Big Mac, super sized fries and a giant Coke. He was an unwashed heathen and a sinner just like us.

Yeah, we knew. Here was a guy with an amazing intellect but who was still somewhere deep inside a wounded boy from a broken home. Our instincts told us that he had not quite surmounted these early problems but we wanted to believe he had made it anyhow. He certainly gave the appearance that he had overcome all the odds. After all he was twice governor of Arkansas, ran the National Governors Association, was a stellar graduate of Georgetown and Oxford Universities and a Rhodes scholar. Not bad accomplishments for a guy raised largely by his mother and around abusive men for much of his childhood.

While he was president you held your nose when you heard rumors of his personal life. But it was hard to hate him too much because Clinton brought results where many before him had failed. Clinton may have been part weasel but he was a damned effective weasel. He was and still is passionate and convincing. He is glib. He rarely reads from a prepared speech. It seems he has gift of on the spot eloquence.

Bill was and is a passionate guy too. Women were apparently just one of his passions. If Bill Clinton has a true love though it is not women, it is politics. His energy seemed boundless. He reputedly survived on a few hours of sleep a night. He was often up late reading and often up early doing more reading. He knew all sides of an issue because he had read all of them. He is a natural debater and can articulate with conviction any point of view he wants.

Bush tries to paint Kerry as a flip flopper. Clinton was the flip flopper to end all flip floppers. Clinton was a ruthlessly pragmatic person. He was not amiss to changing his opinions in a moment if it seemed public direction was going a different way. He realized that to effectively govern he had to be with the majority. So if he wasn’t he would often tune his positions to ensure he stayed with the majority. This of course drove the Republicans nuts because above all but ideology they value consistency. But Clinton cared more about actually getting things done than the feelings of those who could not deal with ambiguity.

And while Clinton was not amiss to helping out his pals and cronies he at least was sensible enough to do it discretely. It did not become the focus of his administration. Instead he became one of these rare presidents who truly did his best for the country. He schmoozed, he backslapped, he persuaded, and he occasionally lectured but he got most of what he wanted. Under Bill Clinton the country moved from record deficits to record surpluses. He paid down the National Debt, the first president to do so in more than a generation. In eight years 23 million jobs were created. During his term we had the fastest and longest sustained growth in the economy in three decades. Family incomes reached record highs. He brought unemployment down to the lowest level seen in 30 years. But the economy was only the start.

He changed the welfare laws to keep able-bodied people from staying forever on the public dole. He protected nearly sixty million acres of forests from logging and put in place the most stringent air pollution standards in the nation’s history. He expanded Hope Scholarships and created Lifetime Learning Tax Credits. He made it possible for people to care for a sick relative and not lose their jobs. He reformed Medicare, signed the Brady Bill and reduced the share of federal spending as a percent of the economy to its lowest point since 1966. He was instrumental in both the Middle East and the Northern Ireland peace processes.

It’s a wonder that the Republicans could hate the guy so much. I think a lot of their hatred was because he was a damned effective president. As much as they loathed his weasel-like behavior they hated more he was so darned good at what he did. Even in the middle of some of his worst personal struggles he still did the nation’s business adroitly. While impeachment hearings were going forward he was not so distracted that he could not respond to terrorist attacks in Africa.

Despite his impeachment Clinton left a country markedly better and wealthier than when he had come into office. Where many talked results Clinton delivered results year after year. His track record is remarkable and probably unequaled since Franklin Roosevelt. It may well be that some of his success can be credited to others. Perhaps some of the economic growth can be attributed to our zealous Federal Reserve or the end of the Cold War. But only a partisan fool would deny him the vast majority of the credit. It was not just luck. He succeeded because he was relentless and utterly focused. If he could not get to his goal by one path he simply tried another path until he succeeded. His failures were large but they were few. His successes were voluminous.

I’d take him back as my president even if he had orgies in the Oval Office every night. At least I’d know that someone who could consider all sides of the issue and make an intelligent choice for the country was the president again. In these troubled times I would sleep a lot easier.

October 26th, 2004 at 10:07pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2004 | no comments

Infidelity: It’s Not So Simple

Prurient Americans (which, frankly are most of us) are waiting breathlessly for the release of Bill Clinton’s tell all book, My Life. Rest assured most of us will not start at Chapter One. Instead we will skip ahead to the part of the story where Monica Lewinski shows up. As you might expect many of the key details (from Clinton’s perspective) have already been disclosed. We learn that once Bill confessed his sins to Hillary he was in the doghouse. Apparently the First Lady can make the President of the United States spend two months sleeping on the couch. We learn that the whole family did counseling. Because we’ve seen snippets of Clinton’s interview with Dan Rather (scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes on Sunday) we learn that Bill dropped his pants for Monica “just because I could.”

It is doubtful that the book would sell quite as well if Clinton had kept his relationship with Ms. Lewinski wholly platonic. It is ironic that his human failing will cause sales of the book to climb into the stratosphere. For all the legal woes and bills inflicted upon him by Ken Starr and the vast right wing conspiracy during his years in office he may end up laughing all the way to the bank.

Clinton’s father died before he was born. He watched his stepfather repeatedly assault his mother. He learned very early to compartmentalize his feelings. He was hardly surrounded by role models during his upbringing. So in retrospect if he had a predisposition toward secrecy and trailer park trash it is perhaps not too surprising. It didn’t help that he was a fairly attractive guy, a terrific public speaker and a born extrovert. Add the title of President of the United States to his resume and if Ms. Lewinski was his only moral failing in office then I frankly give the guy some credit.

As a rule women other than my wife don’t fawn over me. But if I had a 21-year-old temptress willing to perform repeated acts of fellatio on me I doubt I would have held on very long. Most of us guys, when we are only with other guys and after a few beers will candidly admit we are more than capable of such indiscretions. Part of the male brain is wired toward infidelity. It takes repeated conscious effort to live up to our wives’ expectations. Fortunately for us we are rarely in positions of power. Most of us aren’t attractive like Bill Clinton. So his scenarios tend to be hypothetical for most married men. Because we are not alpha males it is easier for us to proclaim our undying commitment to our wives. It’s not that hard to be morally sanctimonious, at least in public, when others in the public spotlight succumb to temptation.

If there is an aspect to the whole sordid affair that really irks me though it is that we quickly resort to stereotypes. Bill was bad for straying. Hillary was good because she didn’t. Monica was a slut and would put out for any guy, not some star struck young lady with intimacy issues. That’s as deep as our thinking goes. Because Hillary held out and Bill didn’t, she is the one with the grievance. She was pure. Bill was Evil. End of public discussion.

This is balderdash. I’ll grant you that there are certain marriages where the wife can make a fairly convincing claim of innocence. We’ve all heard stories of husbands who repeatedly cheat on their wives. At the same time we repeatedly shake our heads wondering why the wives just don’t file for divorce or how they could be so clueless. I think in even the most egregious cases some fault lies on both parties. In the case of the chronically cheating husband the wife was probably more than a bit myopic going into the marriage in the first place.

I can cite the case of someone in my wife’s side of the family. He is roughly Bill Clinton’s age. At the time I first met him he was getting married for the second time. But by that time he had already fathered two children out of wedlock. His father repeatedly cheated on his mother. His father allegedly spent much of his adult life being verbally and physically abusive to them and wrapped up in an alcoholic haze. Wife Number Two was a woman who came from a family of some privilege and money. His wife didn’t learn about much of his sordid past until shortly before the marriage. Yet that did not seem to deter her from marrying him. I don’t know why she married him. Hopefully it was for love. But there were lots of alarm bells that should have gone off. There was one thing though: this in law is a really good-looking guy. We’re talking 9 on a 10 scale, at least. I can’t help but wonder if his looks overwhelmed her common sense. Anyhow, rest assured they have been divorced for some time. Eventually he strayed and hit the booze. She tried to patch things up, but it didn’t work out. He had mentally left the marriage years earlier. And now he is onto wife number three. Last I heard she was still a divorcee and not anxious to get remarried.

There is no way to know for sure the dynamics of the Clinton marriage. But I bet Hillary was more than a little star-struck by Bill. Certainly she knew Bill came from a dysfunctional family. She was likely attracted to him because he was handsome. But I bet part of the attraction was he gave the appearance that he could surmount his past. If so this was a naive assumption. She should have known better. The odds were that if she married Bill she would have many an episode of heartache. Warning flags were there and it appears she chose to ignore them.

Or maybe she figured she could change Bill. This is another one of those fatal mistakes often made by myopic women fixated on one particular guy. I’m guilty of it myself. I have learned the fallacy of this reasoning through the school of hard knocks. No one can ever change anyone. Personal change can only come from within.

Whatever the complex dynamic of the Bill and Hill relationship, Bill’s affair with Monica Lewinski was really a symptom of a larger dysfunctional marital relationship. Hillary was probably clueless. She shouldn’t have been clueless. If the relationship were at the deep enough intimacy level it most likely would not have happened. And if Hillary had reached that inner core of Bill Clinton’s being she would have known who he really was and perhaps never married him. For that she should shoulder some responsibility. I don’t know what kept her busy during the mid 1990s, but I have a feeling she should have spent much more private time with Bill. The work necessary to sustain a rich marriage gives the appearance of being postponed to revel in the thrills of power and prestige.

Hopefully as a result of this encounter their marriage now has that level of intimacy and connection it likely lacked. But somehow I am skeptical. Hillary is a senator and spends at least six days a week in Washington and away from her husband. It sounds like the pattern is repeating itself, except this time there is a role reversal. I hope there is no new Monica Lewinski in Bill Clinton’s future. He’s not quite the Alpha male he was now that he is out of power. But I wouldn’t be surprised if another one turned up in time.

June 19th, 2004 at 11:19am Posted by Mark | Best of Occam's Razor, Sociology | no comments