Some presidents, Dwight Eisenhower being one, left office and continued to exert positive influence.

Tuesday, January 23, 2001

Some presidents, Dwight Eisenhower being one, left office and continued to exert positive influence. A few, such as Jimmy Carter, became even greater after they left the White House than they were while in it. Others (I seem to forget their names) were hardly ever heard of again. What, then, of William Jefferson Clinton as ex-president? Most clear, is he will ensure he does not fall into the never-heard-of-again group. He has more capability than many and more time left than most. Bill Clinton can yet become a great man and be a greater ex-president than he was a president if he can manage to decompartmentalize his life and create an integrity he has never sustained.

Clinton amazes those who know him with two related qualities, i.e., his success in compartmentalizing his life and the skill of survivorship.

A national leader who has often been invited to events at the White House told me of sitting very close to the president at a meal the time of his "emotional mea culpa in the Lewinski matter." As this observer described it to me: "It was a very emotional time. Hillary weeping at the next table Clinton was very moved. People kept coming up to him while we were eating. Finally everything was back to normal and, as if nothing had happened, he launched into an absolutely brilliant analysis of the Russian economy, the Middle East situation, and Northern Ireland – names, dates, statistics, historical and legal matters (and on and on)."

Compartmentalization has its value to carry an individual through a crisis until he can do something about it. Ships, for instance, are constructed as a series of air-tight compartments that can be individually sealed off. If the vessel takes a hit under the water line, that single compartment is closed so that water floods only it. The ship may be somewhat crippled, but it will still float.

Clinton has this amazing emotional and mental ability to compartmentalize, but he is a person and not a structure. He uses it not as an emergency measure, but a settled position. Something is fundamentally defective in a man who can disgrace himself, his family, and his nation before the world – and then casually set it aside as of no consequence.

It’s his style. At the outset of his first campaign for the presidency, Clinton made a statement during a television interview that directly contradicted one he had made immediately before, but after the camera had started. When confronted with the contradiction, he flatly denied making the earlier statement. When shown the replay, he said matter-of-factly: "I never said that." History had just been undone, because he declared it so.

People who were at the famous Willow Creek meeting when Clinton appeared before more than a thousand evangelical ministers tell me that the "apology" the news media reported was simply an unemotional, unqualified, unconvincing statement that he had simply "made a mistake." Not moral offense, not sin – just a "mistake." And not a word about having earlier persistently lied to the world saying "I did nothing wrong."

A man who has been close to Bill Clinton made this comment to me about him: "What a pity – the morals of a tomcat and the mind of a scholar-leader."

This man thinks he can have sex, but it is not sex because he has another name for it. This husband can have an affair with another woman and also be loyal to his wife, because it isn’t the same thing. This president thinks he deposits his personal morals into one compartment and considers he has sealed it off from the presidency. He has largely succeeded, because he has successfully intimidated others into accepting this. He busies himself in another direction and distracts attention from the former. Clinton is a masterful survivor even when he doesn’t produce. If he were on death row, he could talk himself into a permanent pass.

Bill Clinton is ambitious and works hard. He is brilliant and talented. Charming and likable. He has what it takes to be a great man, and his actual legacy may yet be achieved. However, he must open his dishonest compartments and integrate all aspects of his personal life and public performance. Then he must maintain his newly achieved integrity and be a whole person. He might even one day be a very fine first gentleman.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays