“Before our session last week, Dutch, George, and I discussed a change in tonight’s lineup. If we stayed the course, Dutch would have presented Bill’s approach to the dream and George would have presented his son’s. We decided that was unfair to W. But because Jimmy ran out the clock, I did not have time explain our new schedule,” Barack reported.
“Hey, makes no difference to me. He’s been on my case since I turned ten,” offered W. “I’ve grown used to his criticisms. In fact, I’ve developed a coping mechanism—I ignore him.”
“Easy there, son.”
“To tell the truth, I asked my veep to suggest the change. I had an ulterior motive,” admitted Dutch. “Bill gave more than 650 speeches that included a reference to the American dream, almost five times my tally.
“As Bill talked about restoring the dream, he mostly blamed the prior twelve years on me. His accusations were untrue and unfair. Besides, I never read the script for an R-rated movie, and I’m not about to start now.”
“Ouch,” said Dick.
“That’s hitting below the belt,” chimed in Jack.
“Not at all,” answered Ike. “This is payback time. Bill banged away at Dutch and George incessantly during the ’92 campaign and well into his 1996 reelection bid. And he kept using the American dream as his hammer. So, just as Jimmy singed George for a similar offense, Bill’s now fair game.”
“In late September 1994, Bill told an audience in Kansas City that he ‘thought there was a serious chance that we would not go into the next century in a position to preserve the American dream for my daughter and for the children of this country.’ 1 That was pure poppycock,” explained George.
“But the icing on the cake was when he claimed that ‘the leadership that the other party had provided in the White House had followed economic policies that were unfair, but more importantly didn’t work, and talked about the social problems in this country in ways that divided us in order to get them votes and turn the Democrats into aliens, making voters feel that [Democrats] didn’t somehow share their values.’ 2 Again, pure poppycock.”
“Oh, give me a break, George. The overarching commitment in my campaign and first term was to ‘restore the American dream,’” argued Bill. 3 “And if I said that once, I said it fifty or sixty times.”
“That’s not the problem,” offered Franklin. “What Ike, Dutch, and George are complaining about isn’t the number of separate references to the dream—more than nine hundred, an all-time record—it’s that you kept attacking your predecessors long after the 1992 campaign had ended.
“There was a time when sitting presidents refrained from criticizing the guy who came before them. It was a precedent started by John Adams and continued through George Bush’s presidency. It lasted as long as it did because each president knew how demanding the job was, how often he had screwed up, and how vital it was to make the transition of power seem seamless.”
“I never used their names,” sighed Bill.
“That’s a damn lie,” offered Dick. “You called out Dutch by name in an early State of the Union speech.”
“No, I quoted him. In his 1981 State of the Union, Dutch said that ‘if our national debt were stacked in thousand-dollar bills, the stack would reach 67 miles into space.’ I made the point that night that the stack would reach 267 miles,” countered Bill. 4
“There you go again,” Dutch jumped in. “You’re defining what is is. You called me out by name, and you know damn well you did.”
“Whether it was once or a hundred times, blaming your predecessors by name or inference touches a nerve,” resumed Franklin. “Sadly, the man upstairs isn’t capable of distinguishing between an oblique attack and a full-frontal, deeply personal attack. He’s been verbally beating his predecessor black and blue.”
“Bluish?” Barack asked. “But your point’s well taken. I frequently used my predecessors—Bill and George made a damn fine team down in Haiti, and W was much more helpful than I let on— but none of that could have happened if I had verbally smacked them around day in, day out.”
“The seamlessness of presidential transitions should not be minimized,” Lyndon argued. “It’s what sets us apart from emperors, kings, czars, and dictators. We weren’t anointed, nor did we murder our way to power. We were elected by ALL the people. We swore an oath to ‘faithfully execute the Office of the President’ and ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.’ To a man, each of us did our duty.
“But I cannot say the same about Trump.”
“Nor can I,” arose as a chorus from the table.
“Seizing on that slim wedge of unanimity,” Barack suggested, “Then let’s also agree that we can switch up the order tonight and allow George to wrestle Bill and let Dutch whip W into shape. Without objection, and hearing none, let’s proceed.”
“In the middle of Bill’s first term, he went down to Warm Springs, Georgia, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Franklin’s passing,” George began. “And what he said that day was prescient.
“Rather than reading his speech, I will save my breath for an analysis. Here’s a sheet with the key paragraphs:
If President Roosevelt were here, what would he see today?
He would see a country leading the world’s economy, producing millions of jobs with people literally afraid that their lives are moving away from them. He would see a world of turbocharged capitalism in which it is possible to succeed economically, but millions of Americans don’t know if they can hold their families and their communities and the disciplined rhythms of life together. He would see people who are confused, saying, “Well, if there is an economic recovery, why haven’t I felt it?” He would see people angry, saying, “I’ve worked hard all my life; why was I let go at the age of 50, and how am I supposed to send my kids to college?”
He would see people who are cynical, a luxury no one could afford when one in four Americans were out of work or when our very existence was at stake in the Second World War. Now we can afford the luxury, and we have it in abundance, saying, “Well, it “doesn’t make any difference, nothing we do makes any difference. If I hear good news, I know they’re lying.”
He would see, indeed, a country encrusted with cynicism. He would see an insensitivity on the part of some people who say, “Well, I made it, and why should I help anyone else? If you help someone, all you make is an ingrate.” He would also see a profound sense of division in the American psyche, people who really do believe that if someone else does well, that’s why I’m not doing so well, and in order for me to do well, someone else must not do that well. That was not Franklin Roosevelt. He was not cynical. He was not angry. He was not insensitive. He did not believe in division. And he certainly was not confused
He believed that we had to pull together and move forward. He believed we always had to keep the American dream alive. Langston Hughes once said, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it shrivel like a raisin in the sun, or does it explode?” For Franklin Roosevelt, it was neither. 5
“Americans said the same thing throughout my two terms,” offered Barack. “So the economic storms we both experienced were like hurricanes—recurring and devastating.”
“Bill’s line about a dream deferred comes from a deep-seated fear of failure,” proffered George. “From the moment he announced until he looked into the camera and said, ‘I never had sexual relations with that woman,’ he basically talked nonstop about ‘restoring the American dream.’”
“Did you have to bring that up again?” asked Bill.
“Yes, because I’d lose all my street cred by continually praising you,” George replied and kept going.
“In his first radio address as president, Bill told the American people that ‘a single theme [had] emerged repeatedly from all of you in every region and from every walk of life. That theme is the need for change: bold, comprehensive change to reverse the trickle-down policies of the 1980’s and restore the vitality of the American dream.’ 6 And that became his mantra for the next eight years.
“Oh, the catchphrases changed. Putting people first, restoring the American dream, meeting America’s challenges, building a bridge to the twenty-first century—all were but headlines introducing his three core objectives. Bill never wavered from wanting to, first, ‘build an America for the 21st century where the American dream is open to everybody who is responsible enough to work for it’ 7; second, see ‘an America where we’re coming together, not drifting apart’ 8; and third, have an America that remains ‘the world’s leader for peace and freedom and prosperity.’ 9
“As a Republican reviewing his speeches, I was struck by two things—the discipline of his message and his focus on the future,” George continued. “He kept saying the same phrases, in the same order, in speech after speech, year after year. And he had that so-called ‘vision’ thing that folks said I lacked. He thought deeply about the forces sweeping the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century. And while I would disagree vehemently with most of his policy prescriptions for meeting those challenges, I think we should give the devil his due.”
“Hey, we all made Faustian pacts,” interrupted Bill. “I made more than a few. And whatever the devil is due requires a down payment in this life all too soon.”
George resumed speaking. “Bill feared that unless Americans came together, ‘we’d just keep on drifting and lose a lot of the greatness of America and the extraordinary opportunity that the end of the cold war and growth of the global economy and the Information Age presents us.’ 10
“For him, the fear of America drifting apart was visceral. He saw a time when Americans would be staring at each other ‘across the lines that divide us’ and ‘torn up by race and religion and other things that are just engulfing the world, from Bosnia to the Middle East to Northern Ireland to Africa—you name it. All over the world people are fighting because of their differences.’ 11
“At a 1996 campaign stop in Toledo, Ohio, Bill urged his audience to ‘look at what I dealt with as your President, trying to make peace in the rest of the world. Look at the Middle East. Look at Bosnia. Look at Northern Ireland. Look at the problems in Rwanda and Burundi in Africa.’ And then he observed that
you’d think in those poor countries, where people don’t have enough to get along, they’d want to roll up their sleeves, work together, and try to help lift each other up. But in place after place after place, people define themselves by being able to look down on their neighbors, and it’s wrong. But we’ve got to fight it in America. That’s why we’ve got to stand against those church burnings in the South. That’s why if a synagogue is marked up or an Islamic center is defaced, we’ve got to stand against that, too. 12
“He closed by claiming, ‘In my America, you can be whatever you want to be. As long as you believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and you’re willing to show up, pay your taxes, work hard, and obey the law, you’re a part of my America and we’re going into the future together.’” 13
“But it isn’t HIS America. It’s OUR America,” an exasperated Lyndon asserted. “And we’d better put our petty beefs and partisan anxieties aside for the good of OUR country.”
“You’re right,” offered George. “But Bill was not entirely wrong. His American nightmare—and now ours, collectively—grows more gruesome by the day.”
“Bill wasn’t prescient, just perceptive,” offered Jimmy. “He had grown up in Little Rock and had seen how hate can accelerate. He also saw how a new South could be built by people of good will, how Americans could work across racial, religious, and partisan divides to douse the embers of hatred. And I would argue that if southerners can overcome their antagonisms, so can we all.”
“I believe that also,” confided George. “But let’s go back in time to Bill’s first term. He won a number of legislative battles—balancing the budget, national service, passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a crime bill that included a ban on automatic weapons, and welfare reform. The only fight he lost was health care, and even then he billed the issue—no pun intended—as a component of the American dream.
“In his 1993 Presidents’ Day address, Bill asked Americans to ‘recall the many times in our history when past Presidents have challenged this Nation from this office in times of crisis. If you will join with me, we can create an economy in which all Americans work hard and prosper. This is nothing less than a call to arms to restore the vitality of the American dream.’ But it was his next comment that caught my eye.
“Bill explained that when he was a boy, ‘we had a name for the belief that we should all pull together to build a better, stronger nation. We called it patriotism. And we still do!’ Perhaps we can build on those two concepts—a call to arms to defend the American dream as an act of pure patriotism.” 14
“But didn’t you also say he wrapped his legislative initiatives in the ribbons of the dream?” asked Dick.
“Philosophically, I disagree with most of Bill’s initiatives. Pragmatically, I doubt Americans will rally around a warmed-over agenda from the 1990s. To reach unanimity, we cannot re-fight past policy wars. We need to project the American dream deep into this century, perhaps as far as 2050,” George said.
“Dick is right,” Bill interjected. “My initiatives were time sensitive—they were based on polling that tapped into America’s hopes and fears, anxieties and frustrations, then and there. And each had an expiration date—what could we persuade Congress to do before it adjourned? Some were small ball, some were triangulated, some were massive shifts, and some were meant to spark a decade-long debate.
“I accomplished a great deal in eight years. I’m proud of what I did. But the American dream is dynamic. It’s optimistic and futuristic. And it is powerful because every single American—and billions of men and women around the world—can draw hope, inspiration, strength, and shared purpose from the dream.
“Saving for a home, studying to get an education, striving to build a better life for your kids, climbing the ladder of success—however that’s defined by each American—and fighting for the freedoms you enjoy, those elements of the dream have a universal appeal. They know no regional, racial, religious, gender, age, sexual preference, class, or educational limits. None. They pull us together. Period.
“If we are to achieve unanimity, particularly in the limited time we’re given, we should skip the details of my, W’s, and even Barack’s programs and policy initiatives, and concentrate on defining the dream for 2050 and beyond.”
“Nice try, Bill. But as complimentary as George has been about your themes, I think the initiatives you wrapped up in the dream led directly to the existential crisis we now face. Health care for all, ending welfare as we know it, a crime bill with mandatory minimum sentences—to name just three—distorted the American dream beyond recognition,” observed Ike.
“I’ve been fairly quiet so far. But silence should not be mistaken for assent. I am not convinced unanimity can be created effortlessly by committee, by pushing the problems now facing the nation off for three more decades, or by the facile use of language that papers over deep philosophical and political differences. When the fate of our Republic lies in the balance, we cannot take the path of least resistance.
“We may have to go to war—figuratively, not literally—with the man upstairs. And I’d want all the intelligence, analysis, and ammunition I could get before starting something I cannot finish on my terms, and decisively so. I would like to hear the rest of George’s briefing.”
Hearing his cue, George jumped back into the fray. “Bill’s economic plan ought to serve as the case in point. He claimed that it would ‘expand American prosperity and preserve the American dream.’ When it passed the House by only one vote, he claimed that it would ‘really [reduce] the deficit through specific spending cuts that will lead to economic growth,’ that there were ‘200 cuts in old spending programs, $250 billion in deficit reduction through spending cuts alone.’ He claimed that he ‘asked the wealthy to pay their fair share because they are able to pay more and because in the last 12 years taxes have gone down on the wealthy as their incomes have gone up.’ And he claimed that his plan asked ‘the middle class to make a modest contribution through an energy tax.’ 15 What he didn’t mention was that they would pay $7 in year one, $84 in year two, and $204 when his energy tax was fully phased in.”
“He also claimed that his economic plan ‘puts our fiscal house in order . . . pays down the deficit . . . [makes] a down payment on future economic growth, investing in the work skills, the education standards, the technologies that our people need to be able to compete and win in global markets . . . [and] rewards full-time work instead of lifetime welfare.’ 16 His economic plan was, in short, a panacea for all the country’s economic ills—past, present, and future.”
“It worked. Brilliantly,” countered Bill. “We had the longest economic expansion in our history, turning record deficits into record surpluses, creating more than 22 million jobs with the lowest unemployment in 30 years, and average family income . . . jumped by more than $5,000.”
“So you say,” replied Dick. “That energy tax never became law. In fact, you and Al Gore gave up on it when it drew sustained opposition in the Senate.
“And just like the man upstairs is doing to Barack, you’re taking all the credit for the economic growth that Dutch and George’s tax cuts initiated. You’re forgetting the so-called ‘peace dividend’ produced by the collapse of the Soviet Union—another macroeconomic event triggered by your predecessors. You’re also ignoring the hollowing out of our military strength, a mind-boggling mistake by your administration.”
“All true,” argued George. “And yet, the worst was yet to come.”
“Give me a break,” Bill countered. “Dick, Dutch, George, and W left the nation with trillions in debt and billions in annual deficits; millions trapped in poverty-stricken, crime-ridden neighborhoods and dilapidated schools; millions more bankrupted by health care events and tens of millions more without insurance; and untold millions stuck in a welfare system so soulless that the American dream seemed little more than a cruel joke. And yes, I tried to restore the American dream for all those who would work for it. And I did so, often without a single Republican vote in the House or the Senate.”
“Gentlemen, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” Harry asserted. “If we fight the last war, we’re likely to lose the one straight ahead of us. So as juicy a target as Bill presents, let’s not waste our time together taking potshots at him . . . or each other. Let’s move through the Clinton presidency and dispatch with the hyper-partisanship. Telling the truth is hard enough without it undermining the comity apparent in our earlier evenings together. And unanimity becomes impossible if we remain riven by the personalities, policies, programs, and politics of the recent, or in my case, the not-so-recent past.”
“Harry, if the stakes weren’t so high, I’d agree with you,” snapped Ike. “But there’s a learning curve here. Most of us never knew the dark side of James Truslow Adams. Nor did we pay attention to what our predecessors or successors said. We certainly never sat through a seminar like this one. So I want to hear what else George has to say about Bill—good, bad, or indifferent. We owe him that courtesy, and we owe ourselves a dispassionate look at the intel he’s providing.”
“Before George picks up where he left off, I’d like to make an observation,” Jack interjected.
“These tit-for-tat exchanges simply underscore the divisions that are all too evident in our nation, divisions that have existed even before the Declaration of Independence was drafted. Then, we were three million Americans trying to achieve the impossible. We were trying to be citizens and not subjects, trying to be free of the ancient chains of feudalism and slavery, and trying to push the frontiers of a meager existence toward an infinity of opportunities.
“By 2050, we may well be a nation of four hundred million souls. The deep divisions and destructive forces that existed at its birth will still be wrenching us part. We need to be as friendly as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were fifty years after signing that foundational document, and dare I say, as forgiving as they were of the deep political wounds given and received over five decades of partisan combat.
“Let’s learn from their example. Let’s agree to disagree on the inconsequential. Let’s find a way to agree, unanimously, on an American dream that can be as potent and as inspiring as the document Jefferson and Adams reworked together.”
“If that’s the plan going forward, then we’ve wasted enough time poring over Bill’s speeches. They were all inconsequential,” offered Dutch.
“Hey,” bleated Bill. “I expanded the American dream to include health care for all; lifelong learning; competing in the global economy via NAFTA and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; a cleaner environment; legal immigration, including family unification; more police and tougher penalties to make our communities safer; a middle-class bill of rights; and a way to address our increasing inequality.
“Those were not inconsequential—at least not to me. Restoring the American dream was the underpinning of everything I did. As I said then and I repeat now, ‘I didn’t want my child to be part of the first generation of Americans to do worse than their parents. . . . I wanted to bring us together. The diversity of America . . . the racial, religious, ethnic diversity we have in this country, unique among all the large countries of the world, is our meal ticket to the global economy if we can figure out what to do about it.’ 17
“And the first step in renewing the American dream is ‘to move beyond division and resentment to common ground. We’ve got to go beyond cynicism to a sense of possibility. America is an idea. We’re not one race. We’re not one ethnic group. We’re not one religious group. We share a common piece of ground here on the North American continent.’ 18
“If you read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—and all of us have, except perhaps the man upstairs—you’d know that ‘this country is an idea. And it is still going now in our [243rd] year because we all had a sense of possibility. We never thought that there was a mountain we couldn’t climb, a river we couldn’t ford, or a problem we couldn’t solve.’ 19 It was an idea wrapped in a spirit of adventure, a spirit of exploration, a spirit of endless possibilities.
“You cannot be cynical or craven and still believe in the American dream. You have to be a courageous optimist,” Bill continued. “Each one of us was. Otherwise, we couldn’t have overcome the obstacles we faced to reach the White House. More importantly, we couldn’t have convinced millions of Americans to be equally courageous and optimistic.
“But this is not about us as individuals. ‘This is about who we are as a Nation. What are our obligations to each other? How are we going to give our kids the American dream? I am telling you: this is a very great country. We wouldn’t be around here after 250 years if this were not a great country and if more than half the time we didn’t make the right decisions’ as a people. 20
“As former presidents, our batting averages were far better than .500. Guiding this nation from the darkest days of the Great Depression to the last days of the Great Recession; from the attacks on Pearl Harbor to the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon; from the Industrial Age to the Nuclear Age, and then the Information Age, was never a flip of a coin — a fifty-fifty proposition.
“In a few short weeks, ‘we have a set of 100-year decisions to make, 100 year decisions. You know that, deep in your bones, you know how much change we’re going through. But what works is what has always worked for us. When we look to the future, when we work together, when we try to give people the ability to make the most of their own lives, when we try to be a force for peace and freedom throughout the world, we do just fine.’ 21 And that’s what we need to focus on with whatever time we have left.”
“Which isn’t much,” George sighed, looking at his watch. Seconds later, the mantle clock struck nine and the table emptied.”
1. William J. Clinton, Remarks at a Reception for Senatorial Candidate Alan Wheat in Kansas City, Missouri Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/217799.
2. Ibid.
3. William J. Clinton, The President’s Radio Address Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/217961.
4. William J. Clinton, Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on Administration Goals Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/218852.
5. William J. Clinton, Remarks at the Franklin D. Roosevelt 50th Anniversary Commemoration in Warm Springs, Georgia Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/220738.
6. William J. Clinton, The President’s Radio Address Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/217961.
7. William J. Clinton, Remarks in Bowling Green, Ohio Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/222773.
8. William J. Clinton, Remarks to the Saxophone Club in Denver, Colorado Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu
9. Ibid.
10. William J. Clinton, Remarks at a Reception for Representative Dick Durbin in Chicago Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/222671.
11. William J. Clinton, Remarks in Bowling Green, Ohio Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/222773.
12. William J. Clinton, Remarks to the Community in Toledo, Ohio Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/222781.
13. Ibid.
14. William J. Clinton, The President’s Radio Address Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/220014.
15. William J. Clinton, Address to the Nation on the Economic Program Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/218163.
16. Ibid.
17. William J. Clinton, Remarks at a Fundraiser in Chicago, Illinois Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/221570.
18. William J. Clinton, Remarks at Georgetown University Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/221675.
19. Ibid.
20. William J. Clinton, Remarks at a Fundraiser in Philadelphia Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/221900.
21. Ibid.