Jan 16, 2000

Nanny Program Designed to Create Bill Clinton Legacy

The National Nanny Program is working overtime trying to create a “legacy” for Bill Clinton. Triangulation is out. Liberalism is back.

Having been impeached for telling lies under oath about tawdry sex, the president struggles to be loved forever by flinging sugar plums to the wind.

It is an old gambit best remembered by his proposal to fund midnight basketball games for inner-city youth.

Every week there is a new proposal – reduce the number of commuters on freeways, sue tobacco companies, day-care centers for working mothers, more homeless shelters, order third-grade children to read better, hire more teachers, put more police on beats, add prescriptions to Medicare, force pharmaceutical companies to cut prices of health drugs, raise the minimum wage, greater tax credits or outright cash bonuses for the poor.

Intervention of Big Daddy in the daily lives of Americans seemed to be going well until the Occupational Safety and Health Administration weighed in.

It proposed that employers of people working at home on computers – thereby reducing freeway commuter traffic – should conduct safety inspections of the work-spaces. Employers would be responsible for safe stairs, lighting, air-conditioning, posture-pedic chairs and liablity for injuries.

The prospect of bosses inspecting employees’ homes freaked out everybody. The nutty idea was withdrawn hastily.

Still in the hopper are trigger locks on guns, higher standards for automobile exhaust, more money for aids research, and government control of internet technology. Clinton denies a plan is being devised to tax e-mail messages, but – not so strangely – no one believes him.

Clinton’s nanny phobia extends beyond United States boundaries. At the moment he is engrossed in micro-managing goodness in Israel and Syria. After 25 years of a sinking economy following Syria’s unsuccessful invasion of Israel, Syria seeks peace – and return of the Golan heights overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is wary. Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa refuses to talk peace until the Heights is returned. Clinton summoned both leaders to a West Virginia retreat so he could work magic on them.

To sweeten the pot, Clinton offered Israel $17 billion in cruise missiles and other gee-whiz military weapons with which to fend off another Syrian invasion. When last heard from, Barak and Charaa had seen enough West Virginia scenery and were back home explaining themselves to the home folks.

Clinton sent American troops to keep the peace in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia and Iraq with out notable success. He maintains peacekeeping bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Britain and Germany. He lectures Russia about Chechnya, China about Taiwan, Afghanistan about the Taliban, and India about Pakistan.

After the terrorist bombing of U.S. embassies in Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya – and similar U.S. retribution against Sudan and Afghanistan, Clinton has steered clear of the African quagmire. One can’t win brownie points there -- coming or going.

He did, however, manage to visit four countries in Central America this year to feel their pain after devastating floods and bestow $120 million in balm.

Clinton gave the Democratic Leadership Council a preview Wednesday of his upcoming State of the Union speech – vintage nanny.

First, he wants $20 billion more in tax credits for the working poor. Additional funding for “empowerment zones” would be nice. And don’t forget more money for urban renewal, encouraging investment in poor communities and studying environmental causes of disease.

His benefit du jour last week was $50 million to clean up the Great Lakes. This followed a recent proposal to spruce up Grand Canyon.

The awesome thing about all this grandstanding is that Clinton apparently believes he is the only savior in sight. He is quoted as declaring to the Democratic Leadership Council: “”When I am no longer here, and I’m just a citizen like you, what will be our driving vision as a country?”

Gad! What pomposity.

One is reminded of Madame du Pompadour’s reply to King Louis XV in 1757 after he told her Frederick the Great of Germany had annihilated the French army: “Apres nous le deluge!” (“After us, the deluge!”) Somehow, the French nation muddled through.

Americans, likewise, will do fine if the federal government will just get out of our pockets, give up “foreign entanglements” (See George Washington’s Farewell Address) and stop micromanaging our lives.

PARTING SHOTS

Brigitte Bardot, the former sex kitten of France who now devotes herself to animal rights, has appealed to Valadimir Putin, the new president of Russia, to spare the dogs and cats of Chechnia. He had better do something quick before the starving people of that embattled country eat their pets.

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John McCaine, Republican candidate for the presidential nomination, says he was just “doing his job” intervening on behalf of a constituent who had made a $16,000 donation to the Arizona senator’s campaign. Charles Keating’s opinion on the matter is unknown.

Lindsey Williams is a Sun-Herald columnist and can be reached at linwms@lindseywilliams.org