Actors and Their Roles
by Victoria Toensing

Ronald Reagan was an actor who knew he was President; Bill Clinton is a politician who has become confused whether he is President or playing one in the movies.  No, he did not plan to become the protagonist in “Wag the Dog.”  His now admitted sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky began before that cinema was filmed.  Rather, Billusional Clinton supposes he is Michael Douglas playing “The American President.”

Douglas, portraying a widowed President and father of a teen-age daughter dating a mature female lobbyist, orders the bombing of the Libyan intelligence headquarters.  When informed the attack would “level the building,” Douglas asks how many people would be working inside the building.  Told there are three shifts and the night shift has the fewest people, “President Douglas” orders the bombing strike at night. “Somewhere in Libya right now, a janitor is working the night shift at Libyan intelligence headquarters…just doing his job.  He has no idea that about an hour ago I gave an order to have him killed,” is the Hollywood script for Douglas.

Clinton, playing a married President with a college-age daughter and having semi-confessed publicly to an adulterous affair with a White House intern a few years older than his daughter, describes his thoughts on bombing a building linked to the terrorist killing of U.S. citizens: “The night before we took action against the terrorist operations in Afghanistan and Sudan, I was …up until 2:30 in the morning trying to make absolutely sure that at that chemical plant there was no night shift.  I believed I had to take the action I did, but I didn’t want some person who was a nobody, but who may have family to feed and life to live and probably had no earthly idea what else was going on there, to die needlessly….” We can only assume Harry Thomasion, Hollywood producer and FOB who was the Presidential prepper for the “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” lie, wrote and directed Clinton’s words.

The difference between President Clinton and President Douglas was that Douglas refused to make a national address, saying he did not want to use the bombing for political purposes.  Clinton milked two national speeches and a dozen lower lip bites from the mission.

Did he think we wouldn’t notice the similarity?  Did he think he was the only one who watched “The American President” because no one else was present in the White House viewing room when he was its audience?  Did he think because we believed his lies we would also believe his fantasies?  While refusing to give us the full Monica, he gives us the bird.

Psychiatry is not my field, so I will leave it to the shrinks to decide whether Bill Clinton has started counting the Caine Mutiny strawberries.  However, as a Washington lawyer I know enough about government to know the President must be in touch with reality.  The yellow brick road does not lead to the White House.  It exists only in Oz or Hollywood.  Presidential messages to the nation should be crafted by persons learned in government, not scripted by Hollywood chums steeped in make believe.  It should not be too much to ask our President that when he professes to reveal his innermost thoughts to us, he has some.

When my grandson saw me for the first time on TV, he pointed to the electronic box and commanded, “Out, Out,” wanting me to step from the television and be in real life in his Vermont living room.  To you, Mr. President, I say ,”Out, Out (even without your hands up).  Come out of your silver screen and join the rest of us.”

If you do not leave that Hollywood set you may find that, a la Pvt. Ryan, in your final frames the script will direct you to look at your wife and say, “Have I led a good life? Have I been a good man?” And what will your wife respond?