How Will We Remember President Clinton?

N E W   Y O R K, Dec. 14 -- “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow,” implores Fleetwood Mac in Bill Clinton’s favorite rally song. The lame-duck president is probably thinking of little else these days.

Now that a president-elect finally waits just offstage to be sworn in as the nation’s 43rd chief executive, Clinton’s time in the Oval Office limelight is down to its final weeks. At 54, Clinton stares into his future as the youngest ex-president since Theodore Roosevelt.

What’s left for a baby boomer to accomplish after serving two terms as leader of the world’s only superpower? There’s the presidential library, of course. And don’t forget the book deal — Clinton is expected to reap upwards of $10 million for his memoirs.

But as Clinton builds a bridge to his own future, historians say he will likely follow the path of many presidents who left office in less than a blaze of glory. The only president to be impeached since 1868 will likely spend the coming years salvaging his place in history.

Despite the nation’s unprecedented span of peace and prosperity, and even though Clinton enjoys approval ratings close to 60 percent, he faces the daunting prospect that his legacy may never emerge from the shadow of scandal.

Scrubbing Off That Scarlet Letter

“All those presidents leaving the White House under a cloud of disappointment spend the rest of their lives trying to redeem themselves,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who penned a well-regarded book on Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

“You will see that with Bill Clinton because he is a tenacious political fighter but also because they permanently branded him with an ‘A’ for adultery on his chest. He will try to scrub that letter off,” he said.

As if impeachment didn’t make legacy-building difficult enough for Clinton, it doesn’t help that he presided over a prosperous era when the nation faced no immediate global threat and the domestic preference has turned toward smaller government. Any ambition Clinton had to pursue traditional Democratic goals and programs was tempered by the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.