Last Call: The Hunt for a Clinton Legacy
Olson, Theodore B.
LAST CAL-L by Theodore B. Olson The Hunt for a Clinton Legacy 6 0 OUR READERS WILL RECALL THAT IN FEBRUARY'S Last Call we launched the Clinton Legacy contest, designed to identify the words or...
...Thus, the president's carefully scripted Lewinsky denial, complete with gestures, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," is in a virtual tie with his brilliant and apparently spontaneous circumlocution during his grand jury testimony, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is...
...We are also taken with Mary and Gilbert Heisig's recommendation that the Clinton memorial be adorned with the two-faced Roman God Janus...
...It's reproduced above for your delectation...
...And memorable expressions of the Arkansas years and early presidential phrases have by no means been exhaustively catalogued...
...OUR READERS HAVE ALSO SUPPLIED US WITH other concepts that certainly fit within the spirit of our contest, such as the suggestion by Ray Moutousek of Chillicothe, Illinois, to locate the future Clinton monument in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico...
...In the immortal words of Mrs...
...THE PRESIDENT AND his devotees create new potential entries every day...
...Keep those cards and letters, and e-mails, coming in...
...And by Webster Hubbell's memorable lament, "I guess I'll have to roll over one more time," recalled by Joseph Campobasso of Venice, Florida...
...In order to inspire your continued efforts, and in response to many of your suggestions, we reproduce in this space some of the entries that we have received so far...
...Already many of you have picked up on that new farewell line, "You'd better put some ice on that...
...WE WERE THRILLED BY SOME less-often cited entries such as President Clinton's enthusiastic reaction to a Soo-year-old Inca mummy: "That's a good lookin' mummy...
...LAST CAL-L by Theodore B. Olson The Hunt for a Clinton Legacy 6 0 OUR READERS WILL RECALL THAT IN FEBRUARY'S Last Call we launched the Clinton Legacy contest, designed to identify the words or phrases that, in the centuries to come, will best recall and sum up the William Jefferson Clinton presidency...
...In third place, so far, is the president's promise of the "most ethical administration in the history of the Republic," followed closely by the empathetic, "I feel your pain," employed as an all-purpose slogan by the president in a variety of contexts, and his plaintive entreaty to the captured Paula Jones, "kiss it...
...MANY OF YOU WERE DRAWN TO the same memorable Clinton gems...
...Finally, there was one alert reader, Jerome Hanson, who near his home in Winston, Oregon, discovered the rare Clinton fir tree, Abies clintonus erecti, a botanical depiction of the president's perennially alert condition...
...Or from Alexandria, Virginia, Evan M. Duncan's plan to name a singles cruise ship the President Clinton (although it strikes us as out of harmony with the Clinton philosophy to limit the cruise ship to unmarried passengers...
...The Heisigs hail from Mill Valley, California...
...The same is true of the president's campaign to end "the politics of personal destruction...
...One contestant, Mark Libby of Lawton, Oklahoma, even suggested that President Clinton would best be remembered in the words of former District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry upon being busted in a hotel room with a young woman and a pipe full of crack-cocaine: "The bitch set me up...
...OUR CONTEST CONTINUES...
...if I were a single man, I might ask her out" (submitted by John Hines via the Internet...
...BUT THIS CONTEST WILL NOT BE DECIDED BY the most oft-submitted entry, and the words we remember most today may not be the ones that school children will commit to memory in the twenty-first century, so we are paying keen attention to those Clinton or FOB utterances that, while not as widely cited, nevertheless capture the essence of Clinton...
...82 April 1999 • The American Spectator...
...We asked you to comb your memories and databases and to submit the expression, whether uttered by the Big He himself or one of his disciples, accomplices, or victims, that will best epitomize this man, his leadership, and the sense of his era...
...An emerging favorite is "I honor her...
...The first lady's invention of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" is certainly in the running, as is the vice president's not-guilty plea to violating criminal campaign finance laws by citing "no controlling legal authority...
...Clinton, as recalled by Jan Beck of Seattle, Washington, "It's not going to be easy redefining who we are as human beings in this post-modern world...
...Our expectations have been exceeded by your energy and creativity, and entries continue to pour in...
...On second thought, it might be better to rely on Gennifer Flowers's colorful description of what really made Bill a champ...
Vol. 32 • April 1999 • No. 4
