Face it: You loved the little shorts.
Back in the ‘90s when then-President Bill Clinton would rise early for his morning jaunt up and down Pennsylvania Ave., most of us couldn’t help but feel endeared by his choice of clothing. His big, man legs sticking out of teeny-tiny shorts were hilarious. It was goofy. It was likable. And, most importantly, it was human.
If you ask a current day Clinton-supporter what the reason is for their love, most likely they will spew some information about the economy, punctuated with favorable adjectives about NAFTA. Or maybe they will even tell you something about a resurgence of the Democratic Party. But we all know the real reason why they love him. That reason is because he used to jog in tiny shorts. He was struggling with the weight he’d gained from fast food, and we loved every minute of it.
Bill Clinton tossed aside the typical, stiff Presidential appearance – a time when we were familiar with the dubious images of George H.W. Bush perplexed by the conveyor belt and barcode scanner at a grocery store – and showed us something that looked a little bit more like ourselves.
However, when I turn on the television today, I cringe at the sight of our favorite cheeseburger-loving ex-President practically frothing at the mouth within feet of a Nevada caucus site. Watching him campaign for his wife conjures up images of the character Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings,” and the candidacy is his “Precious.” It’s unfamiliar. It’s disturbing. And it’s rather hard to relate to as a human.
The problem with this image is that it makes you think: If Bill Clinton hadn’t been so likeable, then would we have ever viewed him as such a wonderful President? People in the ‘90s were so high from the economic boom (partly to do with the President, sure, but mostly to do with the growth of the Internet and subsequent dotcom explosion in Silicon Valley) that they didn’t really seem to notice that not much else was really getting done.
This man had eight years in office – and with very little opposition considering that it was a mostly-Democratic Congress for half of those years – and yet he still failed to accomplish some of the most basic goals. He had eight years to pass healthcare reform, define a new energy plan to decrease U.S. dependency on oil, develop a long-term plan for social security, reform immigration, and improve our poorest areas and public schools. He had eight years to accomplish these things and yet he failed at every single one. Not to mention, with the implementation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, he propelled the gay rights movement into a backwards tailspin. And all the poverty that was unearthed with the disaster of Hurricane Katrina? That stuff just doesn’t materialize over night. Tragedies like that have been hiding below the dark underbelly of America through many presidencies and have yet to be properly addressed.
The fact is that he was so bogged down in scandal after scandal that little progress could be made. Days and months were wasted as he put America’s problems aside and addressed his own personal issues instead. And yet we forgave him for this and for the lies he told because we loved that he was human. “Well, anyone would lie about that. We understand, Bill.”
Unfortunately for the Clintons, America is in such a crisis right now with a recession, a mismanaged war, our infrastructure literally collapsing beneath our cars and a health insurance program that causes doctors to choose death over life for their suffering patients, that it no longer wants a fun man in tiny shorts. It wants a real leader who is actually capable of getting things done. And we’re just not sure the Clintons can adequately put aside the partisan bickering long enough to do much of anything – again.
The Clintons are losing their human “average Joe” charm, and without that, there is little appeal. People are seeing that they had their chance with eight years, and by most standards, they failed. It’s time for someone new to have a chance. People get nostalgic about the Clintons because Bush seems so inhuman in comparison. But we don’t need to look to the past to find improvements; we need to look to the future. Much like the Nirvana-inspired grunge clothing, bowling shirts and “The Rachel” haircut, some styles need to stay in the last decade. And tiny jogging shorts are one of them.
OBAMA '08!!!
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