How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?

Slick Willie's visit to Vegas has perturbed a local editorialist:

Like one of those science fiction movies in which the telepathic alien tries to hypnotize our brave crew into believing they're safe at home when in fact they're still trapped on his alien world, the psychodrama which was America's encounter with William Jefferson Clinton just goes on and on ... and on.

One would never guess Bill Clinton -- in Las Vegas today for a fund-raiser -- has been retired from public life for years. He's been getting more face time on TV of late than even the current president of the United States -- let alone some hapless second-string Democrat from Massachusetts who's rumored to be running his own campaign for the nation's highest office.

The latest installment of Mr. Clinton's endless unburdening has been fueled by the release of his doorstop of an autobiography, which seems to resemble nothing so much as 30 years worth of transcribed day planners, only with all the hot Saturday night dates carefully excised.

And what is the recurring theme of Mr. Clinton's sanitized mea culpa?

Like a wrestler pretending to take a fall only so he can overbalance his opponent, the former president accepts "full responsibility for what he did" (thus claiming full credit for the first step required by all 12-step programs and pop psychology regimes -- applause, please) ... but then quickly adds that it's really all the fault of Kenneth Starr and the vast right-wing conspiracy.

Someone should write a self-help book for America on her dysfunctional relationship with Willie. The man is a rake.

UPDATE:
It's Clinthog Day!

I feel like Bill Murray in the movie "Groundhog Day." Murray was a self-centered television weatherman, who was trapped in time in Punxsutawney. Every morning he woke, it was the exact same morning. He woke every day to Sonny and Cher singing "Babe, I got you, babe ..."

And we wake to our own Clinton purgatory every morning. I fear the residue of the Clinton years will never dry. I worry that the sticky, humid cloud that settled over us will never lift. I tremble at the thought that no matter what we do, no matter how much time passes, it will be Clinthog Day every day.

But that's enough talk of Clinton's sticky residue. Next up: Bill Clinton as the metaphorical never-drying wet spot.