So how weird is this? The Clinton presidency that began with such grandiose designs has become so becalmed, so shrunken, so defeated, so aimless, so anemic, so technical that George Bush now looms as a giant who bestrode the earth.
Clinton White House reporters tell me they "envy" my time covering Bush, that he seems more "interesting." The Bush domestic policy, known as "status-quo plus," suddenly looks retroactively ambitious compared with Clinton drift."It turns out that was an activist presidency," says Michael Duffy, a Time reporter who co-wrote a book on the Bush years called "Marching in Place." "After briefings with Erskine Bowles, you begin to yearn for five minutes of good, old-fashioned abuse from John Sununu."
Compared with the listless president hobbled by crutches and investigations, paralyzed by the fear of offending anyone, his 72-year-old predecessor appears the master of his fate - skydiving and holding up rabbit ears behind his wife's head at the Gerald Ford museum rededication.
Bush laid the groundwork for the new budget deal. And Points of Light, mocked by Democrats in '92, is practically all that remains of Bill Clinton's social policy.
I faxed the ex-president in Houston to tell him he was looming large.
"Looming Large? With whom, for whom?" he faxed back, in one of his famous free-form letters ("self typed I might add"). He requested that I read the note and then "eat it."
Before addressing my questions, Bush asked about a biting description of him in '88. "But why am I like every girl's first husband? Unfair!"
I wondered if he was appalled that Clinton was reduced to purloining conservative premises.
"I'm glad about that," he faxed back. "Voluntarism, less government, China, Haiti boat people, NAFTA - I like it that our policies made some sense to those who came along after me.. . . We did leave a very strong economy in 1992, but didn't your colleagues want `change' and wasn't I, to them, `out of touch'?"
I was curious about the deeper meaning of those rabbit ears.
"Fun, strictly fun, and I don't have to worry now how the press corps will analyze this. I used to. But now, I am free at last - make that relatively free at last. I don't want the Washington/N.Y. corps charging down to Texas and Florida saying to my boys `Defend your old man/Has he lost it these days?' Yesterday at a Maui photo op, the Silver Fox rabbit eared me - couldn't even let me go one up without retaliation."
So what did he learn at the conference on his presidency at Hofstra?
"I learned there are some real whacko professors scattered out around the country. Mistakes? I wish I had been a Reaganesque communicator - but then do I?; for life is good now, it really is."
Asked about Bob Dole's comment that he had considered asking Bush to help pay off Newt Gingrich's debt, he said he "probably would have if asked."
Did he give any advice to Clinton at the voluntarism summit? "Are you kidding?" he asked.
As for Democrats arguing, at news of the Clintons auctioning off the Lincoln Bedroom and Air Force One, that both parties did that sort of fund-raising, Bush noted: "Everybody did not do it. Honest!"
He said he missed some things about Washington - the White House staff and Camp David. "To some degree, I miss making decisions that matter. But, BPB and I are both very happy. I have no desire to shape history - none. No memoirs lie ahead. Only the Scowcroft-Bush treatise, which will interest foreign policy wonks and name droppers. I think it will be OK, though I expect some critics will trash us. It will say what it was like dealing with Gorby, MT, Mitterrand, Major, Mulroney, Kaifu and Miyazawa, the guy I threw up on! It will explain why I think Saddam Hussein is a really nice guy and why I regret not `letting sanctions work.' No, no - wrong book."