The big surprise of Bill Clinton's Global Initiative conference at the
Sheraton Hotel in New York last week was how strangely calming it was. You
would expect to emerge begging for mercy from a three-day talkathon on the
world's most intractable problems emceed by history's most garrulous
president -- especially if you were a survivor of one of his book tour gigs.
To be sure, Clinton, the big intellectual showoff, had never been less than
brilliant on his feet, but he never knew when to stop. And all that
promiscuous lateral thinking ended up sucking the air out of the room. We
got so tired of his lack of discipline that by 2000 we thought we were
ready for a presidency that operated by assertion. Five years later we see
what that's brought.
Today the former president looks like a wiser man (and it's not just the
glasses).
Maybe it's the effect of his brush with death. He's pared himself down to
the essentials, symbolized by the slimmed physique and the paternal reading
glasses. His style was always inclusive even when he was on the attack. But
now you feel he's shed the psychic baggage of the impeachment years and
with it the toxic rock and roll of his constantly roiling reputation.
The new, honed Clinton on the rostrum made sure that any earnest
hand-wringing grappled with the raw brutality of irreconcilables. He even
saw to it that the panels he moderated actually ran on time.