"Are we entering a period of irrational exuberance, or are things just getting better?"
That's the question Editor-in-chief David Granger poses in the October issue of Esquire. As he and his staff closed the current issue, the Dow hit 9,000 (after sinking to 6,547 in March of this year), the Cash for Clunkers program provided a boost for the auto industry, Bill Clinton flew out of North Korea with two formerly imprisoned American journalists and a variety of economic indicators gave pundits and economists reason to suggest we'd turned the corner on the recession.
Of course, the recovery will take a long time and Oregon -- always said to be among the first states in and last states out -- probably will feel the pain longer than we'd like. But still...there's a lot to like in the current issue.
Of special interest to me is the Q&A, "Bill Clinton, Then and Now..." I've always thought very highly of Clinton. I was fortunate to see him in person at a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. This was pre-Monica and he was in his prime, deftly answering questions about domestic issues and foreign policy. These weren't sound bites; these were spontaneous, free-flowing, well thought-out answers that reflected his intellect, his command of history, his keen political insights and dazzling public speaking skills.
Anyway, the Esquire interview reveals him once again at his best. He critiques his administration, predicts passage of a health care reform bill, offers a forecast of the 2010 congressional elections and analyzes the decline of the Republican Party, among other things. A couple of excerpts:"The thing that I think is wrong and dumb about this [Republican attacks on Obama] is that they're in la-la land about this 'Where was Obama born?' and all that kind of stuff, and I think it sounds like an old record with a bad scratch in it.
"Look, as a Democrat, let them have at it. But for America's sake, what they should be doing is saying, 'Why aren't they buying what we're selling?' First of all, nothing lasts forever, no theory of the case lasts forever, time moves on. So their message won't fly because the circumstances of America are different, the demography of America is different, the psychology of America is different... It's so plainly out of whack with what you perceive (as) the reality of the day and the challenges that we face. We've got 9 percent of all eligible homeowners in America having their mortgages rewritten — 9 percent — and you're talking to me about where Obama was born? Give me a break. I mean it's like, what is this?
"As Democrats, we should let them wander around in this wilderness as long as they'd like. We still have a serious responsibility to pass health-care legislation, to pass climate-change legislation, keep working around the edges on this economic crisis, do something that will work on this home-owners thing. We've got to do something that will really get us there. And support the President. Do something that will really get this stuff done and then be willing to be judged by the consequences of what we do."
ESQ: It does seem like the 1990s was the last time that America truly felt good about itself, that there was not a problem that was beyond our reach. So far in the twenty-first century, we have not necessarily felt that our destiny was ours to determine.
"Yeah, well, people believed in possibilities. And almost more than any specific achievement, I thought that was the most important thing. I thought that it was really important to give the American people a sense of what the twenty-first century would be like, what its challenges would be like and what its opportunities would be like, and then to convince them that we could in fact meet them. I think what breaks people is not adversity; what breaks people is thinking that tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday. That's what's numbing — if you think you can't change, you can't be better. And I didn't like that.
"There was an underlying cynicism, like I said, and we had some horrible, horrible incidents. Not just Oklahoma City, but all the survivalists in Michigan, all that. But in the end, you can't love your country and hate your government. You can criticize your country — that's every American's God-given right and 100 percent of us have done it. But I really believe that eventually, we were going to become a country that was not necessarily more liberal but was more communitarian, with the belief that we had to go up or down together, and we would come to realize that our fates are bound up together, and to realize that our government was an important part — not the only, but an important part — of creating a common future that was positive. And that is the kind of majority that we have now."
Illustration by Joe McKendry
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