Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Apr 21, 2009, 07:23AM

This is Thunderdome, People. Two Men Enter, One Man Leave.

A two-hour "conversation" between fmr. President's G.W. Bush and Bill Clinton is set for next month in Toronto.

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush, both 63, are the only two presidents from the Baby Boom generation. (While Mr. Obama, at 47, technically qualifies, he identifies much more with the Internet-savvy, social-networking Gen-Xers and even the millennials who came along after.) It now appears the two presidents may be the last of their kind.As such, they embody the ideological struggles over Vietnam, the Generation Gap and other cultural values that ignited in the 1960s and that bedevil America still, in fights over gay rights, gun rights, God in the classroom, pot on the street, protecting the Earth or projecting American power.Although both presidents demonstrated an ability to compromise in the interests of bipartisan consensus — Mr. Clinton toughened welfare rules while Mr. Bush expanded public health care and funding for education — their opponents saw them only as the personifications of the evil of the other side.So Mr. Clinton was impeached for abasing his office after lying about an affair with an intern.And the wild-eyed are still trying to get Mr. Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their handling of the war on terror.The meter doesn't exist to measure the time and energy that has been wasted on all of this.

 

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