The Sins of the Husband
By Leonard Fein
No, the sins of the husbands should not be visited on their wives. So why is it that I am unhappy that Hillary Clinton seems to be running for the United States Senate? Is she not a distinguished person, easily the intellectual peer of the best of the Senate (though not of the retiring, but scarcely shy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan)? Is she not uncommonly articulate? Is she not, by virtue of interest, passion, and experience, conversant with the central issues that will come before the Senate? Do I not find myself in agreement with her view on matters of public policy nine times or more out of ten?
Since the answer to each of these questions is decisively in the affirmative, what is it that troubles me? Truly, I cannot blame her for her husband's childish dalliances, nor would I presume to judge her reaction and response to said reckless, thoughtless, exploitive, presumably compulsive, actings out.
But: Enough, already. Enough of the Clintons. I do not want to be reading about them, about any of them, for the rest of my days. I need a break - and so, I strongly suspect, does the nation. We've had six and a half years now, and that means they've been right there, right in our face, for just about 2,372 days. That's too long for a Woodstock. Let their marriage be crowned with bliss, let it dissolve; let Chelsea become a neurosurgeon in Palo Alto or an elementary school teacher in Nepal; let them be invited to dinner at the Gore White House or be snubbed by the Bush White House. I do not want to know. I want, instead, to be able to muse, and soon: "Say, whatever happened to the Clintons, remember them?"
The last time I was in Bill Clinton's presence - this was at the dinner honoring my esteemed friend, Rabbi David Saperstein, on the occasion of his 25th anniversary as Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism - the President did it again. He spoke, quietly, movingly, and persuasively, about the connections between Littleton and Kosovo. This he did without a note, yet another in a string of virtuoso performances. His gifts are not merely prodigious, they are seductive. One must fight the temptation to fall in love with him.
So why fight it? Why not just give in, do it? Because, dammit, he will break your heart. He will break your heart not only by his personal behavior; he will break it by his policy choices. And it's not even that those choices are dramatically worse than others might have made, it's that we're entitled to expect more of this immensely thoughtful, truly gifted man. It is inconceivable that he does not know better.
Which, obviously, has nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Clinton. But she is stuck as an inextricable part of the acute case of Clinton Fatigue from which I/we suffer. If elected, we will be treated to detailed accounts of every twist and turn in the path of her relationship with her husband, reports on her doings will overshadow those regarding other and not less worthy colleagues, Washington will stay Hollywood. Please, enough.
But then the little birdie who will not leave my shoulder whispers one word, over and over: Giuliani, Giuliani. And I become a docile Democrat again, resigned to Clintonitis, to a politics of breathless gossip columns. Giuliani? They say, of course, that he's a friend of the Jews. But how can you be a friend of the Jews if you are an enemy of everyone else, especially of poor people? How can you be a friend of the Jews if you are an enemy of public education? Does donning a yarmulke and showing up at rallies in Williamsburg make you a friend of the Jews? So the trains run on time, so what?
There's more to it, of course; there always is. It turns out that David Luchins has joined Mrs. Clinton's staff. Luchins, who has worked for Pat Moynihan for a bunch of years, is an old friend and colleague. We've learned, he and I, how to disagree most agreeably, and have now and then joined forces, he representing the Orthodox community, I the Reform, in order to smooth the troubled path between the two. A senator, any senator, may be measured not only by her or his own merits, but by the virtues of the staff he or she assembles. Score a big one for the putative candidate from Little Rock.
Finally, the "her/his" "he/she" of the preceding sentence deserves a moment of front and center attention. New York, like most states, has never had a female senator. California does not appear to be suffering from the fact that it has two women, Feinstein and Boxer. Might not New York benefit from having at least one? For yes, there is a difference. It is inconceivable to me that a United States Senate with substantially more women among its members would not have endorsed a much tougher piece of gun control legislation that the incumbent, heavily male and distressingly pusillanimous actual Senate did last month. (And yet it out did the craven House of Representatives.)
So, score two for Hillary, and the Clinton Fatigue be damned.
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