Evil Is Not Impressed for Very Long

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The evanescent, conjured reality (Cedras evil ... er, that is, I mean, Cedras good) must be present and true -- at the time. The salesman or the politician requires persuasive hallucinations to earn a living.But those who, * like me, voted for Clinton and have wished him well believe now that his multilayered, many dimensioned reality, too slick by half, lacks a moral core.

During the campaign back in 1992, Clinton and Gore seemed taken with the rhetoric of the recovery movement. Clinton hasn't absorbed its most useful slogan: "Keep It Simple." A now-you-see-it, now-you-don't style leaves Americans feeling a little conned -- as if they sense that in Clinton's mind, the people are as infinitely manipulatable as the rest of reality.

In the Haitian adventure, the admixture of Carter's mind-set and personality to those of Clinton produced strange effects. Clinton turned himself into the hypermasculine, planes-in-the-air bad cop while Carter fluttered in as the angel of conciliation, the Blanche DuBois of crisis diplomacy.

In any case, many of the evils of the planet (General Cedras and the atrocities of Haitian politics, for example, or the slaughters in Rwanda) undeniably arise from a brutal, uncivilized, masculine side of human character. It may be advisable -- and constitutionally imperative -- for American Presidents to keep American soldiers out of such satanic messes. Clinton has been neither aggressive nor effective in facing the tragedies of Bosnia and Somalia, which may be part of the reason he felt tempted by the apparently more manageable case of Haiti. But if a President asks American soldiers to go in, what is needed to answer such evils is absolute clarity and, usually, a brute counterforce. Evil is not impressed for very long by those plates spinning on nose and chin.