The American Spectator

Enemy of the Week

We've been away longer than expected. But do you know how long it takes to patrol the Canadian border from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back again, with extra surveillance along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes? Since November 2 we've been running an underground railroad for anyone wishing to emigrate to the Great Maple of the North, out of concern that what happened to John Kerry and Tom Daschle and now Colin Powell could happen to them: defeat, division, drawing and quartering, the whole nine Bush yards, including compulsory Sunday school and firearm maintenance.

Thursday was an especially good day for our Canada repopulation project. All eyes were turned southward, as everyone who mattered, save Jerry Ford, reconnoitered in Little Rock, R-Kansas, to celebrate what appeared to many to be a mass outdoor baptism at the shrine of Sts. Clinton and Clinton. In a nice local touch, no one had bothered to place a roof atop St. Bill's Basilica, which permitted everyone in attendance to soak to the bone in unbottled Ozark waters. A mini-health care crisis broke out even before Holy Bill wrapped up the worship service to himself. No one could say if the new Clinton complex provides health services to visitors who come down with arthritis, rheumatism, and the first stages of pneumonia.

To be honest, the Greatest One wasn't looking too healthy himself. But that's Hillarycare for you. Weeks after quadripartite bypass surgery the patient in this case was ordered to pursue rehabilitation in survivalist conditions, cut off from all normal human companionship save for the ministrations of Nurse HRC herself. Surveillance cameras caught said nurse grasping the hand of her charge, as if the two were mister and missus. Yet on closer inspection one could tell her fierce grip was cutting off circulation in his arm. Suddenly our first black president seemed unappetizingly pale. To add illumination to insult, right then on MSNBC correspondent Hillary Rosen spoke knowingly of what she referred to as macho Bill's "multiple infidelities." But you can help. To fight this dread disease, send a donation to the Multiple Infidelities Foundation, c/o MediaMatters.org.

A media future still awaits the patron saint of the Clinton Library. ABC is looking for replacement players for its opening segments of Monday Night Football. Bill wouldn't have to emulate Terrell Owens, just the other actor who walks around the locker room rapped in a cozy towel. Nothing like being one of the guys.

John F. Kerry's sentiments exactly. His return to the U.S. Senate this past week had the makings of Charles Lindbergh's ticker-tape parade down Broadway. Maybe Philip Roth will write a novel about what the U.S. would have been like if Senator Kerry had won the White House. But let's not stray from the Senate cloak room, where not a few close colleagues walked up to the Massachusetts hero, knelt on one knee, and kissed his hand -- in a reversal of the ceremony Mr. Kerry performs every night upon his return to the Heinz home. No man can be a boss in every realm.

Unless a certain Someone intervenes from on high. That was the Rev. Floyd Flake's message in his invocation yesterday inside the Clinton Holy Land. In an example of unadulterated caesaro-papism, the Reverend Flake prayerfully thanked God and his servant President Clinton, or perhaps it was Bill Clinton and his servant God, for the presidency of the aforementioned St. Clinton, which gave us the greatest economy in world history, the safest streets, a record number of new jobs, the lowest inflation, the most balanced budget -- all this after Clinton had decreed the Magna Carta, discovered the New World, ended disease and poverty, liberated women in seven continents, and broken 80 on the golf course before he turned 50. Now if only he could find it in his repaired heart to forgive Ken Starr.

For President George W. Bush, there was not much to add. He said many nice things, just as he had said many nice things to the Palestinian people after the expiry of the latest French Napoleon, Yasser Arafat. Bush praised Clinton's compassion and kindness to strangers and stray animals and above all his "persistence," a codeword if ever there was one. What mattered, in dealing with this EOW, is that Bush left his daughters at home.

topics:
Health Care, Bill Clinton, Law, NATO