The American President

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Summer Wildcat Mary Fan

Bill Clinton is a hero again.

Gone are the front pages devoted the to the president's alleged entanglements with fleshy, toothsome amours. Gone are the headlines about ascetic prosecutors decrying corruption and usury in the Oval Office.

Instead we see Clinton as ambassador; Clinton as law-tester and policy-forger. Pictures of him visiting China, stories about him wielding his line item-veto power.

Sure, conservatives criticize him for playing ball with the Beijing government, and the Supreme Court barred him from using the line item veto. But he looks good and the nation is feeling pretty good. In May, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.3 percent, the lowest in 28 years. The last time the nation had it so good, Richard Nixon was president.

We want to believe.

We want to be proud.

We watch as Clinton, the first U.S. president to visit China in almost a decade, proclaims in Beijing that personal freedom is "the mandate of the 21st century." Standing in a city of conflict, where dissenting students were plowed down by tanks in Tiannamen Square.

We see Clinton talking, smiling broadly at China's President Jiang Zemin.

"There may be those here and back in America who wonder whether closer ties and a deeper friendship between America and China are good," Clinton was quoted saying in the New York Times. "Clearly the answer is yes. We can learn much from each other. And as two great nations, we have a special responsibility to the future of the world."

A hand extended in diplomacy.

Echoes of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who was the first president to visit China. JFK gave the famous "Ich bein nein Berliner" speech at the wall that once divided Communism from the "free world."

Clinton, with his Rhodes Scholar brilliance and his slow drawling charm.

Sharp as Nixon, charismatic as JFK, he's slipping through the thorns of scandals unscathed.

He's poised to be the next John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the next president-hero.

We're hungry for it. It's been past time.

Hero presidents are part of American mythology, our version of other countries' conqueror leaders and legends. JFK is the most recent one to seize the nation's adoration.

We love hard, we love long. We still haven't forgotten the stories about Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

We're an imaginative, flamboyant nation, a young, innocent nation still wanting to believe. Still needing a character, out of storybooks, out of fables, out of the best of a bright nation.

The question, of course, is how far are we willing to extend our belief? Are we hungry enough to lower our eyes unseeing past still-unresolved allegations of illegal campaign contributions, abuse of presidential power, knowing attempts to mask scams and breaches of sexual conduct?

Is it worth it?

It's a question of your definition of hero.

Does the end result define the hero regardless of the means used to arrive there? As long as there's a big bang and a pretty picture at the end, do all the muddy tracks that lead there fade?

It's a Machievellian question, really.

You might say: of course the little things matter. The principles matter.

I do it all the time.

Whether the sentiment holds strong and unbendable as principle is another matter.

When you see your president tall and strong and in another country standing for what your country at its best stands for Ð human rights and freedom Ð you're inclined to forget.

And so I fear that when I am a tottering old grandmother, I'll be joining you in leaning back with shining eyes and reminiscing to my grandchildren, "When I was a freshman in college, the legendary Bill Clinton held office and all America was clean and young and hopeful."

Mary Fan is a molecular and cellular biology and journalism junior. Her column appears weekly in the Arizona Summer Wildcat.