What the tsunami joined together, the hurricane is driving asunder.
Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, that juggernaut of disaster fund-raising, are feeling the stiff winds of political self-interest raking their odd-couple tent.
Were it not for incompetence, the Iraq War, earthquakes, tsunamis, bankruptcy, floodwaters and hurricanes, the 43rd occupant would be a barrel of belly laughs. As it stands, the citizenry has to laugh to keep from crying.
As one not given to crying or to shame, former President Clinton has gone international to fix his post-White House reputation. He and Bush 41 raised more than $11 million for those damaged by the December tsunami. But what exactly drove Clinton into the embrace of the man he defeated in the bloody 1992 presidential election?
Their campaign was as sharp as the nation had seen in many a year. Clinton indeed was from the wrong side of the Arkansas tracks, but he was gifted with intellect and a vision that he could become president. He was a trailer-park Baptist from the poorest of states born to a mother who shed too many husbands far too quickly, including his father. Still, he sought to challenge the wealthy WASP who had attended all the right schools and amassed the impressive resume.
Losing was bad enough in 1992, but it was downright insufferable for a popular Bush from Connecticut (and, of course, Texas) to lose to an upstart from the Ozarks clearly not to the manor born. The Bush family eventually took a measure of revenge over the victor with a controversial 2000 election that brought to the Oval Office the eldest son of the vanquished.
As class had set Bush and Clinton apart, political expediency would unite them in the wake of the December tsunami. It took four days for President George W. Bush to emerge from his Christmas-New Year’s vacation after the Sunday tsunami had jolted 11 nations fronting on the Indian Ocean. After thumbing his nose at the international community with the invasion of Iraq, Bush slapped them with silence and a weak aid package following the disaster.
In an attempt to salvage national honor, and perhaps his family’s sense of decency, Bush 41 buried the hatchet and hit the fundraising trail with Clinton.
For his part, the lesser-born seemed all too proud to have been embraced by this former opponent who is of the landed gentry and a certified member of the ruling class.
In wake of the terrible response to the federal abandonment of the poor in New Orleans, Clinton found his voice. He attacked the Bush administration’s handling of the evacuation and, along the way, took a slap at its tax cut and conduct of the war against terrorism. The reversal moved CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien to question Clinton about the relationship of this odd couple.
“I felt uncomfortable when I ran against him in ’92 because on a personal level I always liked him, but we had big differences,” Clinton said. “I didn’t have a very good relationship with the current president. He didn’t like me because I defeated his father. I was determined I was going to get to understand him and get along with him and support him when I could in good conscience.”
This good will has run out as Clinton looks beyond his self-interest to the Democratic Party’s next election. After Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was finally fired, Clinton allowed how it would have been better for the blacks stranded in the floodwaters if the director (and the sitting president) had been more like his FEMA director, James Witt. “But both of us came out of environments with a disproportionate number of poor people,” Clinton said.
This is about as close as the former president might come to citing his class differences with the Bushes.