Welcome to the ‘hood, Mr. Former President:
My friends in Harlem tell me they’re just delighted to hear that you want to set up your new office near them in the world’s most famous black neighborhood.
Stop by the world-famous Sylvia’s Restaurant on Lenox Avenue for soul food.
Pick up a latte at the new Starbucks Coffee on 125th Street and some doughnuts at the new Krispy Kreme franchise.
Take Sen. Hillary on a date to the Apollo theater or to Magic Johnson’s movie multiplex. Make a night of it.
If you’re out late and run out of cash, stop by the new 24-hour bank down the street.
After all, you helped make it happen. The once-blighted area has been making a big comeback in recent years. That rebound has come under the economic boom that occurred on your watch and the federal empowerment zone designation that came under your 1993 economic renewal package to help revitalize inner-city areas.
Since then, by federal estimates, hundreds of millions of dollars of new investments have come to Harlem.
Your critics have hounded you out of renting more expensive space in Carnegie Hall Tower on Manhattan’s glitzy 57th Street. Too expensive, they say, even after you offered to share the cost to taxpayers with financial assistance from your private foundation.
Well, leave it to you to turn a lemon into lemonade. As the old political adage goes, when in doubt, run back to your base.
And if there ever was a time when the state of your legacy was in doubt, this is it. Your post-presidency has been dogged by disturbing questions: Did you abuse the pardon power? Did your wife make a greedy end run around the Senate gift rules? Did the two of you slip out of the White House with furniture that belonged to the American people?
Some of these questions you brought upon yourself. Your enemies brought on others. Once again, it is your good fortune to be blessed with inept enemies.
That’s why I think you’ll find a way to survive this flap the way you have survived so many others.
Your pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, for example, truly smells to high heaven. I ask you: Did you pardon Rich in a spontaneous burst of mercy? Did you suddenly feel his pain? Did the gift of almost a half-million dollars to your presidential foundation and library fund from his former wife, Denise Rich, a major Democratic contributor, have anything to do with it?
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Well, we may never know the answers to these questions partly because your critics will be too busy picking themselves up after tripping over themselves. While Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), a notorious practitioner of political overkill, holds hearings into your pardons, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he wants to impeach you again.
Remember Specter? He was the senator who, when ask to decide whether you were guilty in your Senate trial amazingly voted “Not proven.”
It was “Scottish law,” he said. That was a surprise to those of us who thought the Senate was part of the United States.
Now Specter wants a second crack at impeaching you? Do you think he’ll do a better job of making up his mind this time?
Also last weekend, the New York Post all but retracted a story on Page 1 that your former adviser Dick Morris fed to the editorially conservative tabloid. Morris claimed your wife failed to disclose gifts of designer gowns, purses and other niceties while she was first lady. Hillary denied it and it looks like she, not the Post, was right and the two of you, not the public, have been wronged once again.
The more often your critics shoot blanks, the better they make you and your wife look–whether you deserve it or not.
Then, there’s President Bush. He helps your cause, too, as far as your political base is concerned.
Bush does not argue, for example, that his tax plan would give the highest income folks just what Democrats say it will, the price of a Lexus every year, while the lowest bracket would receive the price of a muffler. Instead, he argues that, hey, those who pay the most taxes should receive the biggest refund.
That sounds reasonable enough but it also means the plan will provide no assistance to an estimated 24 million children, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning Washington-based think tank. That’s one-third of the nation’s children and, as the center also notes, a majority of black and Hispanic children.
But when you point any of this out to the Bushites, they will accuse you of “class warfare,” the new politically correct slander against anyone who speaks up for poor people.
The Bushites constantly ask me why so many African-Americans have remained so loyal to you, President Clinton, and the Democratic Party? I respond, why not? Your enemies have made it so easy.
No, inner-city residents are no dummies. They understand their interests just like those folks on 57th Street do. They know the difference between “trickle down” and being trickled upon.
So, welcome to the ‘hood, Brother Bill. In fact, you’ll have it a bit easier than most Harlem residents. You won’t have to worry about getting a taxicab.
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Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune’s editorial board. E-mail: [email protected]