The downsizing of a President

By Manohar Malgonkar

WILL he, won’t he? That uncertainty must have given India’s leaders sleepless nights for months: Will Bill Clinton come to India this winter as planned?

That question has now lost all relevance. Now the big question is: Will Bill Clinton still be America’s President this winter? And more pertinently, even if he somehow manages to hang on in office, will his coming or not coming have much significance for India at all?

Because a man who has been made to stand with bowed head, sweating and fidgeting and looking miserable, and to say before a Grand Jury things such as "I have sinned. I have lied. I am sorry," — how can he retain any dignity?

The whole world saw him at his confessional, a proud man being humiliated; a giant reduced to the size of a dwarf. If, after all this, he still goes about as though nothing has happened, striking poses, shaking a fist at other national leaders who have done something wrong and telling them in a thundering voice: You there. Stop it and don’t do it again!

If he does that, he risks being a laughing stock.

Americans surely, form the advance guard — indeed the storm - troopers - of a civilised liberalism. They have adjusted themselves to the realities of the permissive society; evolved a set of values free from cant or hypocrisy.

So they champion human rights, animal rights, gay rights, gay marriages even. Knowing they cannot banish drugs altogether, they have been practising a form of damage-control. They make sure that their burnt-out drug addicts have a free supply of sterilised needles for their twice-a-day shots. Their schools solemnly make budgetary provisions for a free supply of condoms to their students on a one-per-schoolday basis. Knowing they cannot prevent sexual encounters between male and female college students, they have introduced dormitories in which both sexes intermingle.

This commendable spirit of tolerance, this readiness to come to terms with the facts of life, give place to a puritanism of Islamic sternness when it comes to the one man whom they have chosen as the leader of their nation. The President. He must lead an altogether blameless life. Particularly in the matter of sex, he must show himself to be the ideal husband, an avtaar of Rama.

Rama is the hero of the Ramayana. He is a good man who sought to live the good life in a world which, then as now, had its full quota of bad men and women. So good and evil have to battle it out. Ultimately good prevails. But at a terrible cost.

But Rama’s story has a moral, too: His eka-patnitva. No extramarital sex. Throughout his life, Rama remained true to his wife, Sita, as she did to him.

And in this Rama is altogether exceptional even among the celestial beings that throng the Hindu religion. None of the other thousand or so gods and goddesses lay claim to this virtue. If anything, most of the others are just as prone to lustful thoughts and promiscuity as us are earthlings.

So, if, even among gods who personify the glorification of the best qualities of men and women, there is only one who can lay claim to eka-patnitva, where, in the free-for-all sexual climate of today’s advanced countries, are you going to find another Rama?
That role, the American public seems to have palmed off on the man they made their President.

This is a recent development.In the past, American Presidents were not required to behave differently from other red-blooded American males. Even in living memory there have been at least two who were known to have strayed from eka-patnitva. Franklin Roosevelt, it will be remembered, had to be taken about in a wheelchair. Nonetheless, he had a live-in mistress who had the free run of his official weekend residence. It was she who was with him, fussing over the way he should be posed as he sat for an official portrait, when Roosevelt got his heart attack and went rigid. His aides and security men had to hustle the mistress out of sight before making an announcement that the President had died, or letting in the first lady, Eleanor, into the room.

And as to President John Kennedy, his sexual prowess verged on the legendary even though he too, because of his injured back, was required to be careful about not subjecting it to much strain. His philanderings were the principal topic of conversation of Washington’s social gatherings, and the envy of the macho world.

But in those days, the American publicity organs exercised a civilised self-restraint. It was an attitude rather like that of the British towards the sexual misconduct of their royals, or, even more aptly, of the French and Spanish people towards their national leaders. Their private lives were, well private. Not to be subjected to the glare of publicity.

There are close parallels between Bill Clinton and King Juan Carlos of Spain: Both are handsome, charismatic men with a talent for image-building. Both have performed remarkably well as heads of state. And both have had extra-marital flings.

For Clinton’s sexual frolics, the America people seem all set to tar and feather him. Whether they impeach him or not, by the time they have done with him, whatever dignity had come Clinton’s way by virtue of his office will have been divested. The Spanish, for their part don’t seem to be unduly bothered about the affairs of their king.

Only once did they seem to be outraged. In 1992, they discovered that their King had made it out that he had put his signature to a document which would bring a law into force at a time when he was not even in the country but had "disappeared". A week or so later, he was found to have been holed up in Switzerland. According to the Editor of Catalonia’s El Mundo, he had a woman with him — a woman who was not Queen Sofia.

But since that time King has not done anything to strain his subjects’ capacity for tolerance. Which means that his philanderings are more discreet. It is common knowledge that he has had a long-standing affair with a lady in Majorca, and several shorter relationships with other women.

And who can imagine what the dynamics of American investigative processes would have made of a situation with which the French lived for years and years in perfect harmony: the Double Life of their President, Francois Mitterand.

Mitterand ran two households. His legal wife, Danielle, was the mistress of the President’s official residence, Elysee Palace. The other "wife" Anne was installed at the President’s official country residence. Mitterand divided his time evenly between both families. The whole of France seemed to know of their President’s double life, and no one seemed to be particularly shocked when Mazarine, Anne’s daughter, announced at school: "My father is the President of Republic."

Both wives, dressed in mourning black, attended Mitterand’s funeral. No one was scandalised.