Mullings by Rich Galen | Issue for December 10, 1999

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I'm Tired of the 'Last' Everything of the Millennium

Friday, December 10, 1999

I don't care how much police officers and fire fighters get paid. It isn't enough.

The fifth, and final, Presidential press conference of this year - or any other year starting with the number 19 - was held, not in the East Room at the White House, but at the State Department. Legacy. Legacy. Legacy. The White House is now completely focused on foreign policy in its increasingly frantic attempts to make the first dozen words of the account of this administration start with words other than, "Bill Clinton, only the second President in U.S. history to have been �"

So, they have the press conference at the State Department where a lot of reporters who cover the State Department, but not the White House, are in attendance. And he starts with a long statement about Syria and Israel. And he succeeds in avoiding what he wants to avoid - question after question after question about Hillary, her campaign for Senate, her moving out of the White House, whether he will ever move to Chappaqua and so on.

How weird is this business about Hillary packing up to leave the White House for Chappaqua, New York over the Christmas holidays? It's like a Folgers Coffee commercial running backwards.

You know that Folgers Coffee Christmas commercial where Peter comes into the house early in the morning and he and his little brother make coffee and his mom and dad are upstairs asleep and the smell of the coffee wakes them up smiling and his mom comes down the stairs and sees Peter and says in that little a-mom-sees-her-son-who-has-come-home-from-college-for-Christmas-voice, "Peter" and I cry? You know that commercial? OK. Substitute Hillary for Peter, and substitute Bill for the mom. Now, run the commercial backwards. Hillary leaves the house and Bill backs up the stairs and falls asleep. Smiling.

At his press conference Clinton was asked whether he was supporting the Justice Department's suit against gun manufacturers because he couldn't get the legislation through the Congress. He responded with a three or four minute litany of all his legislative successes which must have had minority leader Dick Gephardt - who needs to run against a Republican-controlled-do-nothing-Congress - shouting at Clinton to SHADDUP! after about the second minute.

Bill Clinton, asked who he thought was the person of the century said it would be Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He then quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes' assessment of FDR. Holmes, said Clinton, thought Roosevelt "did not have a first class mind, but did have a first-class temperament." I hereby affirm I believe George Walker Bush is the intellectual and emotional equivalent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, on behalf of the Republican Party of Ford's Landing, thank Bill Clinton for his endorsement.

Mullings is going to Des Moines, Iowa for the third, and final, GOP Presidential Debate of this year - or any other year starting with the number 19 - on Monday evening.

Here's another thought about the millennium: In the year 1000 nothing much happened. 66 years later everything changed. In a hurry. This led to the first recorded instance of the cry: "Norm!" in a mead hall.

I was at an herbal supplement industry conference this week which was attended by a person writing for "Self" magazine. A guy walked buy and asked if the Generation-X edition was known as "Self-ish" magazine. Then, of course, we got into the existential edition: "Someone Else - Somewhere Else" magazine, and the Zen version: "No One."

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