This is not the admiration born from great deeds or courageous acts but from the high name recognition that comes from holding the most powerful office on Earth. Even better for him, the titular leader, Speaker Newt Gingrich, is disliked by a good majority of the American public and a goodly share of his own party. Yes, it appears that the president plans to travel to his spot in history in a golf cart. If it is true that we get the president we deserve, it is even truer that whom we admire says just as much about us as about the object of our admiration. And right now, we admire someone who, by golfing through his second term, feeds our illusion that all is well.
Great presidents get a lot of other people to do great things.
But in 1998, admired presidents don't have to do either. They can just perpetuate the numbing of America to the crises in our midst. We read, for instance, the statistics about 15 million children growing up at risk, their lives mired in violence, poverty and neglect. We nod with concern. And so does the president.