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Lance Morrow: Meet the carpetbagger-in-chief

February 11, 2000
Web posted at: 5:45 PM EST (2245 GMT)

By Lance Morrow

(TIME.com) -- A long time ago, someone asked President John Kennedy what he planned to do with his life after he left the White House, in January 1969 (he would have been 51). Kennedy replied: "I don't know. I will be at the awkward age -- too young to write my memoirs, too old to start a second career."

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Bill Clinton will be at the awkward age -- 54 -- when he leaves office next year. But after listening carefully to Hillary's official announcement for the U.S Senate the other day, I begin to see what Bill Clinton has in mind for himself in the longer range. I don't mean a Senate seat; it was in a phrase Hillary told New Yorkers: "I may be new to the neighborhood. But I am not new to your concerns."

There it is -- the universal carpetbagger's formula. It invests the crassest careerism with a missionary's higher purpose, like Wilsonian democracy. Disconnect ambition from geography, and, properly spinning, you can go anywhere.

I think I detect Bill's political genius in the idea: "Have Concern, Will Travel." This is candidacy by parachute. Whether it will wash in New York, we don't know yet, but as for the rest of the world, who knows?

Anyway, think what a problem retirement is for a Big Cheese. King Lear, out of office, wound up homeless. Napoleon in his last years on St. Helena, according to the diary of his aide-de-camp, General Gaspard Gourgaud, was reduced to this: "November 5. The Grand Marshal (Montholon) is angry because the Emperor told him he was nothing but a ninny... January 14 (1817). Dinner, with trivial conversation on the superiority of stout women over thin women..... February 4. The Emperor wants to buy a cow. But where shall we keep it?" The imperial party acquires a cow, but someone lets it loose. Napoleon suspects his coachman Archambault. " 'Did you let the cow get away? If it is lost, you will pay for it, you blackguard!' "

We know that no St. Helena awaits the Comeback Kid. Forget a dreary presidential library in Little Rock, or even Dreamworks. Instead, Hillary's formula opens the world to Clinton, an accomplished head of state with a two-term record of unprecedented sunshine. Any country from Ireland to Papua New Guinea would welcome a leader of Clinton's gifts and supernatural luck. Papua New Guinea might even send a headhunter to recruit him.

The task is to find an office of some size, worthy of the ex-president of the sole superpower. It mustn't look like too much of a demotion.

Clinton, a gambler, might try Russia. There's a real challenge. "I'm new to the neighborhood," he would tell the audience as he deplaned at the Moscow airport. "But I am not new to your concerns."

Or he might land in Beijing: "Hi, I'm new to your neighborhood, but...." Brussels, to run the European Union? Rome? The pope has not been well -- and spectacular casting against type might take the papacy into an entirely new orbit. And speaking of orbits, the anarchic freedom of the Internet may eventually create the need for an overlord.

On the other hand, it might be seemly to start small, closer to home. Fidel Castro, for example, is getting old. Eventually, Senator Hillary Clinton might find herself flying to Havana for the inauguration of El Presidente Bill Clinton. Elian Gonzalez would hold the Bible. Clinton would promise that Cuba was not merely a stepping-stone.

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