The First Nietzschean President, Take Two

 I didn't really watch the convention carefully tonight, but I found it odd that Joseph Lieberman, who should have been the keynote speaker, instead opened things up for Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore's daughter.  I don't know which is more idiotic -- Lieberman being the person to warm the crowd for Tommy Lee, or Tommy Lee's own gray matter.

I know it's early, and I know Gore has been around the master campaigner, Bill Clinton, long enough that it's far too early to count him out -- but my gawd, the missteps so far are beginning to remind me of the ineptitude of the Mondale campaign.  

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Speaking of the master campaigner, Bill Clinton's presidency is the subject of a recent journal entry by Hanah.  In it, she notes the contrast between the Bill Clinton of the 1992 campaign versus the Bill Clinton of more recent times, what she sees as an energetic and inspired Bill Clinton versus a tired and beaten down Bill Clinton.  She speculates that Bill Clinton was eventually beaten down because he was a great, smart man who finds that, upon obtaining the most powerful political office, it doesn't matter -- he still must follow polls, negotiate with Congress, compromise his core beliefs, and in the end, wind up unchallenged and bored.

I think that's an outstanding explanation of what might possibly happen if an Objectivist with Bill Clinton's political acumen and talent were somehow elected to the Presidency.  But I don't think it explains the Clinton phenomenon.  I think a better explanation, rather, revolves around something I've discussed before:  the notion that Bill Clinton  is our first Nietzschean President.  What I mean by that is simply this:  that Bill Clinton craves political power above all else.  There does not seem to be an inner, principled core that drives him in the pursuit of political power to some end (i.e. Reagan in pursuit of limited government and a strong military, or FDR -- one of the most skillful accumulators of political power this nation will ever see -- in pursuit of the New Deal).  Rather, this is a man who has seemed driven his entire life to.... be President.  To that end, he needed to be loved by enough Americans to be President (or maybe I have that reversed, and he has been driven to a need for adulation, which itself has driven him to the office?).  And in pursuit of that end, the man was remarkable.  At times, he was the most remarkable political figure on the stump that I've seen. 

At some point, I think he discovered that being the most powerful political figure in the world didn't really give him that much real power at all.  In a sense, he was the Gail Wynand of politics -- a tragic figure who could have been and should have been something better.  I still find George Bush's line in his own recent acceptance speech very telling in this regard:  "Our current president embodied the potential of a generation.  So many talents.  So much charm.  Such great skill.  But, in the end, to what end?  So much promise, to no great purpose."   

I still can't help but imagine what an energized Bill Clinton with a libertarian/conservative outlook might have accomplished.  I suspect it would have made Reagan, that cause's greatest champion in ages, look somewhat clumsy in comparison.  I shudder to think of the damage a Bill Clinton with a full-blown Entitlement State outlook might have accomplished.  In that regard, we've been fortunate that Bill Clinton's goal was personal power rather than political ends.  

So much promise, to no great purpose.  I suspect that realization -- or perhaps simply the realization that he will never again hold so much "power" -- is almost entirely responsible for what Hanah has observed in the President.