One need not admire his victories, but one must respect them.

He was not a great president, that much is certain, nor even, perhaps, a good one. He lacked the sweeping vision of a Reagan or a Roosevelt, let alone the decency and humility of a Truman; his only vision involved his own power, and the other virtues were banished from his White House early on. But he was an interesting President, perfectly suited for a time when politics resembles a spectator sport, broadcast into millions of homes through the good offices of CNN. He inspired more novels and biographies, more praise and more hatred, than any leader since Nixon--perhaps since FDR, even. And while he himself may fade away, into Hollywood or Westchester, the memory of the Age of Clinton will linger in our collective psyche long after his successors have dragged their second-rate variety acts offstage.

In his own way, Clinton was a dangerous man, if only because his personality and proclivities made him better suited to be a sultan or maharajah then an American president. This may explain why he always looked happiest on his grand tours--in Africa, for instance, or lately in Vietnam--where the adulation of the masses washed over him, unmediated by the stumbling blocks of the two-party system and the constitutional order.

But America was strong enough to contain his ambitions and to survive them--and so we will be strong enough to miss him, as well. He was, if such a thing is possible, a great bad man, and for eight long years, he was the bright sun around which our political life whirled. We will not see his like again for some time.

And there is a small voice within me that says we have not seen the last of him yet.

Ross G. Douthat '02 is a history and literature concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.