Not Your Sweetie

How Bill Clinton’s ghost still haunts the Bush White House

Newsweek

Nov. 27 — The numbers just didn’t add up. For days leading up
to George W. Bush’s trip to Lithuania and Romania late last
week, White House staffers were projecting that huge crowds
would turn out for the president’s visit. “The initial estimates are
between 50,000 and 100,000,” Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told
us on Air Force One. “In each place?” asked an incredulous
reporter. “Yes.”

WELL, ACTUALLY, no. Another top staffer, trying to tamp down
the hyperbole, nudged Fleischer to revise his estimates. “I stand
corrected:
25,000 to 50,000 in Lithuania and 50,000 to 100,000 in Romania,”
Fleischer said. He was still off by nearly 100,000: about 10,000 turned out
in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius and about 50,000 in cold and rainy
Bucharest.
At first, I didn’t understand why White House staffers—always loath
to engage in “hypotheticals” of any sort—were talking up the hypothetical
turnout in the first place. The only answer I could come up with: Bill
Clinton. When the former president visited Bucharest five years ago, about
100,000 people packed the downtown square of the Romanian capital. Of
course, the people of Eastern Europe would turn out for any American
president, such is their love of the freedom we espouse. But whenever
Bush has had to follow Clinton anywhere—notably to the D-Day
ceremonies at Normandy last Memorial Day—his administration has been
keenly aware of Clinton’s shadow.