American Rhapsody (57 page)

II. Mid Term:
Far and Away

All of the rest of this depends on you, Harry. He cannot gain weight! Not one pound! He has to get as lean and wiry as Tom in Mission Impossible. No cigars, either! Not even unlighted ones! Ever!

1. He is sighted like the resurrected Elvis by ordinary Americans who describe a tanned, soft-spoken man, his gray-white hair down to his shoulders on a motorcycle, his puppydog, Buddy, huddled against him. The motorcycle is an antique green Indian.
   He is seen at a diner outside Cheyenne, eating only vegetables . . . in the stands at a Little League game in Sonoma, California . . . at a county fair in Twin Falls, Idaho . . . at a log rolling contest in upstate Oregon. Tourists in Joshua Tree National Park hear the sweet sound of a lonely saxophone playing “Summertime” in the moonlight, follow the sound to a campfire, and find Bill Clinton and Buddy.
   He is friendly to the ordinary Americans he meets, even signs autographs, and tells them he's “rediscovering America and myself” and writing the book he's always wanted to write since college.
   He is seen in smalltown churches of various denominations and, one night in Bakersfield, he plays his sax with a bar band. A tourist at Yosemite takes a blurred picture of him with Chelsea and Buddy. He spends a couple days privately with Jesse Ventura and Billy Graham and shows up to help Jimmy Carter pound some nails at an old age home. He stops at Chris Reeve's house for a week and helps him with his nursing care, although we don't know about it until he's long gone.
   He's seen praying at JFK's grave and touching the names on the Vietnam Memorial. The press is going crazy trying to find him, but all they find is an occasional motel register impishly signed “T. Lott” or “N. Gingrich” or “R. Nixon.” Bill Clinton as the resurrected, elusive Elvis is the biggest story in the world.
   
2. We hire impostors to show up on the bike with Buddy at various places and get him off the road. We take him to the L. Ron Hubbard Scientology Center on Florida's Gulf Coast. Scientologists like him anyway because of the tax-free status he granted them.
   We trim ten more pounds off of him and pump him up. We give him cosmetic surgery that accentuates his cheekbones and sculpts his jawline. We permanently tint his facial coloring so the world will never see that humiliated red face again. We teach him to speak fluent Spanish. We get rid of his Southern drawl and replace it with a Western twang. We get him surgery to lower his voice. We sit him down with Deepak Chopra and Rain Man Oscar winner Ron Bass and they start writing his book.
   We convince him to become a secret, card-carrying Scientologist. He doesn't need the charisma lessons Tom found so useful, but he sorely needs the psychosexual balancing and alignment so many stars are such fans of. He undergoes the balancing and alignment with painful effort. We are not convinced Bill Clinton will ever be celibate, ever maintain the purity of his instrument, but we are relatively certain he won't go flashing that damn thing around.
   
3. Out on the road, more Americans report sightings of him, but with a twist now. He stars in random acts of heroism. A woman whose car has broken down on the freeway, about to give birth . . . here he comes on his Indian with Buddy. He delivers the baby. A drunken man in a bar with a gun . . . he talks the man into giving it to him. A fire in an apartment complex . . . he rushes in and saves a toddler hiding in a closet clutching Tinky Winky. (Think of all those heroic stories we planted about Tom saving lives in the month before
   Mission Impossible
   was released.) The press is salivating now. Bill Clinton as Elvis as the heroic Christopher Reeve as Superman holding Tinky Winky in his arms.
   
4. Monica Lewinsky receives a handwritten, heartfelt two-page letter of apology, which is leaked to the press. We get Robert James Waller—
   The Bridges Of Madison County
   —to write it, with a rewrite by Rod McKuen and a polish by Jewel.
   
5. Chelsea goes to medical school and will study epidemiology. She tells Oprah she will spend her life fighting plague-like diseases in Third World countries.
   
6. A year has gone by now. He is as big as Elvis, bigger than Christopher Reeve, almost as big as Tom and Tinky Winky. Now we're ready for the galaxy.
   

III. Long Term:
Mission Impossible

1. The press will do anything, agree to anything, to get an interview with him. Her editors force Maureen Dowd to agree to let us edit her precious prose! Sam Donaldson will agree to not even be seen on camera during the interview! Jann Wenner will agree to do a later cover of Dodi Fayed if he gets the Bill Clinton exclusive! Sir David Frost will agree to an hour with Sharon Stone if he gets it!
   But no, not yet. We let Maureen and Jann and Sam and Sir David and the others grovel and grub.
   
2. We publish his book first—
   Travels With Buddy
   —by Bill Clinton. The world is stunned when it sees the man on the cover. Thin, tanned, cheekbones popping, intense, eyes a piercing blue, hair full, longish, and snow white. Is that really Bill Clinton? Wow! The book itself is poetry—a love story between a man and the country he loves. (A Steinbeck scholar at Stanford did a polish after Leo Buscaglia rewrote Deepak and Bass at the last minute.)
   The book isn't about politics. It is about the people he met and the places he saw on his Indian with Buddy.
   
3. Now we're ready for the press, whose representatives are literally prostituting themselves to have access to Bill Clinton as Elvis as Christopher Reeve as Superman holding Tinky Winky. Barbara gets the first interview—a campsite somewhere out West. Coyotes howl, fireflies glitter, cacti rustle or do whatever else cacti do. He talks to her over a campfire in the moonlight, Buddy at his feet, the fire crackling. He's wearing denim—(we don't want to overdo the jeans thing because of Carter and Carville and Jesse Ventura, but maybe Tom Ford at Gucci can come up with a variation).
   He will devote himself to helping the poor, Bill Clinton tells Barbara. Not just here but in Mexico and around the world.
   Then we allow Maureen and Sam and some of the others to speak with him—after they've signed their consent agreements. No questions about cigars, blowjobs, masturbation, Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers, Willey, Broaddrick, Hillary, Eleanor, etc., etc. No questions about the past. Life begins with Buddy on the Indian.
   I edit their copy, I see their tapes. Jann puts Dodi on the cover of
   Rolling Stone
   . Sir David gives Sharon a full hour. Andy Rooney interviews Buddy. Bill Moyers does a PBS Special about the Indian motorcycle as the modern-day Pegasus.
   Since we grant Bill Clinton exclusives in most nations of the world, Dodi Fayed appears on covers almost everywhere in the world as part of the deal. Dodi action figures appear in toy stores and Tom announces he is developing a project with Oliver Stone about Dodi as a CIA operative.
   
4. The world is in love with Bill Clinton, this tanned, rangy, athletic figure with the Western twang. The red-faced Bill Clinton with the whine in his voice is but a faint repressed memory. The parsings and Grand Jury appearance have been purged from the sociocultural record. Bill as Elvis as Christopher Reeve as Superman holding Tinky Winky . . . speaks softly, with a deep voice, in simple, unparsed, red-blooded sentences. (We don't want a change as extreme as Madonna's British accent.)
   A goodness emanates from him. A spirituality. Love. Compassion. Acceptance. Understanding. Forgiveness. Maturity. Wisdom. Harmony. Clarity. Peace. He has been Rumi-ed, Yanni-ed, and John Tesh-ed. He is The Serenity Prayer, John Denver singing “Annie's Song,” The Three Tenors doing “Ommmmmmm.”
   
5. He announces the formation of LTN—Love Thy Neighbor—a private, international volunteer effort to help the poor. Donations and volunteers overwhelm him. He picks out target cities, many of them Spanish speaking, and goes into these cities with thousands of young, committed, idealistic volunteers.
   Now he is Bill Clinton as Elvis as Christopher Reeve as Superman holding Tinky Winky as Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. We control all access to him. No interviews without our usual, by now universally-accepted (except for the rabid Maureen Dowd) conditions.
   
6. He marries a young, beautiful, intelligent Hispanic woman Scientology has picked out for him. She has Nicole's class and Kelly's perkiness. They appear together, with Buddy, on Barbara, mixing fluent Spanish with matching Western twangs. She charms America. It is evident they are very much in love. (Think Tom and Nicole, John and Kelly, Warren and Annette, and, of course, Dodi and Di.)
   
7. He targets Mexico City for a month-long program. Twenty thousand volunteers follow him there. Then Ho Chi Minh City—“My own private war”—he says. Then Bombay and Moscow.
   He wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
   There is a massive “Clinton For President” movement in 2004. He denies all interest in running for president. We continue controlling all access to him. I edit all the stories. I preview all the tapes.
   
8. He and his wife have two beautiful babies. LTN continues its anti-poverty crusade around the world. Chelsea is often at his side now, with Buddy, his Hispanic wife, and the two little brown ones.
   As the election of 2008 approaches, a draft Clinton For President avalanche has begun. The Hispanic vote is the majority now in many parts of America and it's all his. Hopefully, the economy is screwed up. George W.'s continuous out-of-the-closet boozing has made him a national joke. Bill Clinton is a shoe-in for the presidency. He's only sixty-one.
   
9. But he is caught cheating on his wife with a twenty-nine-year-old implanted waitress who once spent a night with Axl Rose. His brother-in-law gives him a black eye. His Hispanic wife sues him for divorce.
   Chelsea drops out of medical school and becomes a Hollywood starlet. Buddy is hit by a car. Scientology disavows him. The press won't sign my consent agreements. He gets fat. His facial tint turns bright red. I fire him.
   Gone are his wife, his kids, Elvis, Christopher Reeve, Superman, Tinky Winky, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Chelsea, Deepak, L. Ron Hubbard, Buddy, and the Indian motorcycle. Bill Clinton is back as Bill Clinton, his instrument impure.
   The Democratic nominee for President in 2008 is the senator from New York, Hillary Rodham, her face a plastic surgeon's blurry vision of a younger Sharon Stone.
   

Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry! I'm sorry. I don't want to represent Bill Clinton. He'll never be Tom Cruise. When he lost the Oscar for
Magnolia
, Tom went to a party, made an L on his forehead, and said, “I'm a loser. Where's the bar?”

Tom Cruise isn't a loser. But Bill Clinton is. He's history with the Andrew Johnson asterisk, the blockbuster that tanked and almost brought down the studio.

Oh, Harry, poor Harry, you've been so loyal to him. You did your best. Forget him, Harry! Where's the bar?