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By comparison... Dubya to Bill: "Keep It Up."By Rick Horowitz
Dear President Clinton: I know it's become a tradition for the outgoing president to leave a little note here in the Oval Office for his successor, and Laura and I certainly appreciate the kind words you left for me on Inauguration Day. Maybe this letter will start a brand-new tradition: a message from the incoming president to his predecessor. Anyway, my message is: "Thanks!" Thanks, first of all, to both you and Mrs. Clinton for the warm welcome you gave us at the White House. Laura and I can only imagine how busy you must have been that morning, saying all your goodbyes and making sure the movers didn't leave anything behind, but you were both as gracious as you could be, and we really appreciate it. If you hadn't done anything else for us, that would have been plenty. But your generosity over these past few weeks has already gone way past that. All those pardons of yours, for instance -- we had no idea you were going to do so many of them right at the last minute. Not to mention some of the people who got them. Not to mention the way some of them were kind of slipped in outside of normal channels. You probably heard me telling reporters how you certainly had the right to pardon all those folks (we presidents have to stick together!), even though I wouldn't have gone near some of them with a ten-foot pole. But the way you handled it, you helped unite both Republicans and Democrats, which is one of my biggest goals. It was the same thing with the gifts. My Dad tells me every president leaves the White House with some presents from friends and supporters around the country. But when people heard you'd taken $190,000 worth, that really made an impression. I'm sure it isn't cheap, furnishing those two expensive houses you have now. But grabbing up all that stuff right before your wife came under the Senate's gift rules struck lots of people, Republicans and Democrats alike, as kind of undignified. Maybe not as undignified as all those office pranks your staff pulled in the West Wing before they left, but still not quite right. Personally, I was glad to see it -- we were planning to redecorate the place anyhow. (And on the pranks, I was able to say "No big deal," which made me look really magnanimous.) Now I see you're looking for somewhere to put your new office. The law says every ex-president gets to have one taxpayer-funded office anywhere in the country for the rest of his life. So naturally you're looking at some of the most expensive real estate on God's green earth: a whole floor in some fancy luxury tower in Manhattan, right next to Carnegie Hall and with a great view of Central Park. They say the rent is $700,000 a year, which is more than the rents for President Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush's offices combined! I couldn't be happier for you -- and for me, too. When people hear where their tax dollars are going, my tax-cut package will look better and better! And speaking of money, I see you're already lining up some speeches for big bucks, even though you haven't even been out of office for a month. I say, "Go for it!" -- as long as it's legal, who cares how it looks, right? But didn't I read somewhere that you turned down $2 million to appear in an ad during the Super Bowl? Did they actually come up with something that was too tasteless for you? It's hard to imagine -- I figure you were just cooking up a bigger deal somewhere else. I can't wait to read about it. It's funny how things work out. All during the campaign, certain people kept saying how I didn't look "presidential." But I always said, "Compared to what?" Keep up the good work. Posted 2/1/01. Fresh
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Rick Horowitz