The retelling of the Bill Clinton story recently on PBS’ American Experience was more saga than the usual documentaries of that renowned series, which seeks to capture and project the nature of an American Presidency and its importance to history.  Nevertheless, it set the mind to thinking how different and hopeful were the times then.  We have gone from promise to precipice.

The Clinton Presidency of course gave way to the hapless administration of the nation’s affairs and its government by George W. Bush, and it would serve the Obama camp well today to make sure that it does not approach this year’s election in the form of Al Gore, one of the Clinton Administration’s endpoints.  Gore bears the unique responsibility of having lost a national election for his failure to carry his home state or others where using Bill Clinton might have yielded victory.

When the prospects for this year’s election tighten in the months ahead – made so perhaps by unknown events and almost certainly by an anxious, volatile electorate, the Obama camp must be ready to deploy Bill and Hillary Clinton in the HispanicLatino community – and not curl the opportunity that Gore’s team bungled.

The PBS documentary on Clinton ended up with the usual ‘what-if’ scenario that turned on skirts and infidelity.  Those themes had to be included for history’s sake – this is a documentary after all.  But the larger, more important point is that the Clinton Presidency did not end upon an errant Supreme Court decision.  It ended much later when the progress Clinton had made to set the country up for its next exalted period in history finally ebbed away in ill-advised wars and bloated budgets.  The documentary should have ended with how the promise of Clinton could not have been vouchsafed by his vice president, who was selected because he was in the same vein as Clinton and – in retrospect – his experience and views might have averted disaster.

Instead of benefitting from a Gore Presidency that could have built upon the foundations of the successes of the Clinton Administration, the nation was put on its presently disastrous path.  Only when the economy cratered and the government’s finances went from surplus to deficit and when bailouts buried merit did the Clinton story end.

Documentaries are supposed to encapsule a moment in history important enough to be captured on film.  Often they carry a special cautionary tale or a message that holds perennially.  The Clinton PBS special might have fallen short in a historical context but it at least reminds us of a lesson that should not go unheeded by a very select handful of decision-makers in Washington and Chicago.

Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.