To each his schadenfreude.

I’ve enjoyed seeing the Clintons exposed for their mean, racializing campaign tactics lately — the smirk on Bill (“the first black president”) as he implied that Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson are a couple of black guys no one should take seriously.

But don’t overlook the Clintons’ record in power. After all, they were president for eight years, governor before, and senator after. They sometimes got a pass due to the moralizing, evangelizing rightwing lynch mob that pursued them. But consider the record.

When Bill ran for president in 1992, he made a special trip back to Arkansas for the execution of a brain-damaged black man who asked to leave the dessert at his last meal for “later.” As governor, Bill could have pardoned him, but the point was to show he could be tough on crime. It was the exact equivalent of Senator Hillary voting for the war in Iraq — to show she was tough enough to be president. You could almost excuse the pandering in order to win, if they’d used the power to accomplish something. Uh-uh.

They had a Democratic congress but failed on health care and caved on the subject of gays in the military. They had the dotcom boom with them, but incomes for the vast majority of Americans stagnated in their years in office. They jailed blacks at a far higher rate than the Reagan administration. They adopted the corporate agenda for NAFTA, throwing American workers out of jobs and creating despair in Mexico, leading to the influx of “illegals” from there.

As for foreign policy, they prevented a solution in Bosnia in order to bomb there, and then attacked Serbia in 1999, creating the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo that was the excuse for the bombing — as well as setting a precedent for the Bush attack on Iraq. They tightened the screws on Iraq through sanctions, leading to perhaps thousands of deaths of kids and vast resentment among Muslims. They were the table-setters for the Bush wars.

Bill Clinton’s sole accomplishment as president was to be on stage, along with Monica Lewinsky, when 400 years of sexual puritanism in the U.S. finally came up short. It wasn’t anything he intended.

Compared to this sordid record, the empty speechifying of Barack Obama looks good. Barren is better, though vacuous. “It is about the past versus the future. Looking back versus looking forward.” You have no idea what it means, but at least you can put it on hold, reserve some judgment.

Obama is about charisma, leadership, grace — as Teddy Kennedy said. He’s the first black Kennedy. He brings inspiration, said Caroline Kennedy, as did her dad, JFK, and Martin Luther King. But this misunderstands inspiration. Rev. King didn’t inspire the civil rights movement, he was inspired by it. They found each other, then they pushed presidents. It was a mix of inspiration, perspiration and organization. It was a movement.

Even Ronald Reagan came to office with a sort of movement behind him: the well-funded, well-organized corporate backlash against the radicalism of the 1960s. Only John Edwards, now retired from the field, seems to have understood that you need some force behind you when you arrive at the top. Or it all turns to goo.

Other takes? I have a friend who focuses on the pant suits. Hillary’s are rigid, boxy, teflon-like, stiff, circa 1990, resembling armour, designed to de-gender, and in solid predictable colours. Michelle Obama’s, on the other hand, are sexy, nuanced, fluid, body-hugging or skimming, in diverse and textured colour, intelligent, transcending dated versions of what it means to dress as a competent, exciting woman, youthful but not overly so, confident.

And I know a nine-year old with a keen sense of social justice. I said Americans are excited because they may get their first black or first woman president. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said. “What matters is what they do, not what they are.”

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.