Bill Clinton's other best legacy

Photo Credit: Michael Totten

A while back I wrote a piece praising Bill Clinton for having the gumption to reform welfare and called it, “his best legacy.”

I wasn’t exactly wrong. But I was ignorant of something excellent which goes unnoticed and should be added to Clinton’s legacy. I know better now, thanks to Michael Totten, who spent a few weeks in Kosovo and filed this report: An Abominable Blood-Logged Plain

Strange country, Kosovo.

It’s European, but it isn’t Christian. It’s majority-Muslim, but it is not anti-American. Foreign soldiers are hailed as liberators and protectors rather than occupiers. Most Western countries recognize the majority-Muslim nation’s recent declaration of independence from Serbia, but not a single Arab country has done so…[…] But Kosovo is a brand-new Muslim-majority nation forged in violence and war with the help of American soldiers. Most countries still have not recognized its independence. Like Israel and Taiwan, its very right to exist is on trial. It deserves more attention than it has been getting.
[…]
President George W. Bush is deeply admired in both Kosovo and Albania, but no U.S. president tops Bill Clinton in the public affection department. A main street leading into Prishtina’s downtown was renamed Bill Clinton Boulevard….Vizier Mustafa is sculpting a statue of Clinton which will soon be erected somewhere on Bill Clinton Boulevard. “He is our savior,” Mustafa told a Reuters reporter. “He saved us from extermination.”
…
Restaurants abound with American names: Memphis, Hemingway, Route 66. I even found a patisserie and disco bar named Hillary, after Hillary Clinton.

I stood in front of “Hillary” and snapped a couple of pictures. A man rose from an outdoor table and said something to me in Albanian.

“Do you speak English?” I said.

“I asked you why you are taking pictures of my café,” he said. He sounded slightly annoyed and suspicious, but only slightly.

“I’m American,” I said. “And I like your sign.”

“You are from USA?” he said. “Please come in!”

The piece is actually too long and too good to be excerpted in any way that can do it justice. I urge you to read it and to pass it on to others and tell them to take the time to read it, too – even if they “hate” Bill Clinton. It’s not just about him. It’s about people living in a brutal place and trying to find a way to live securely and peacably with their neighbors and with history.

But sticking to Clinton, and to the value of the American Presidency – it is worth noting. We are too enthralled with our partisanships and our “hates”, sometimes, and we over look the fact that – as with the papacy – the Office of the American President brings out qualities in the person called that we (and perhaps they) do not always recognize at first. It allows him to do “what needs to be done,” even if the world tells him not to do it, even if the world “hates” him for it.:

…the American Presidency is…larger than the person who occupies the office, and it is noble. The American President freed slaves when too many would not entertain the notion. The American President has carried the big stick used to overthrow tyrants and bullies both foreign and domestic. The American President has put his airmen to use to keep his vanquished enemies in Berlin from starving in a brutal winter, he has used his navy to bring aid after tsunami. The American President has dreamed great space voyages into reality, has opened closed markets, has encouraged a people to tear down walls. The American President has envisioned tens of millions of people raising purple fingertips to the sky, and made it so.

The Office of the American President was not created for pageantry, and the man (or woman) voted into it is not there to be “loved.” He is there to protect and defend his nationals and and articulate the primacy of human liberty throughout the world, even if he never gets much credit for it. Kosovo loves Bill Clinton. Iraqi’s and Kurds love George W. Bush.

Nations and people who have lived under jackboot and tyranny always love the American President. And nations ruled by tyrants have always loved his foes. Something to consider as we head into an election.