WASHINGTON, June 13 (UPI) -- How to explain the continued fascination Americans have with the Clintons? The best answer anyone may have found is contained in "The Clinton Gang," the opening sketch on the Feb. 24, 2001, broadcast of NBC's Saturday Night Live.
"Good evening," begins SNL's Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton. "These past few weeks have been a difficult time for me and my family, as a number of questions have surfaced concerning my conduct in the final days of my presidency."
After ticking off a list of what those might be, Hammond, as Clinton, looks into the camera and says, "You deserve an answer to all these troubling questions, and tonight I'd like to offer one simple explanation which covers them all: I do what I likes, and I likes what I do!"
"Oh, come on, folks," he continues. "We're the Clintons! What do you expect? Look at us!" he says. Furthering the point, cast member Ana Gasteyer, playing the part of Hillary Clinton, says, "Admit it! You can't wait to find out what we're gonna pull next!"
As George Bernard Shaw once said, "When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth." In this case, one does not have to search too far or too deeply.
History will not be kind to the Clinton administration. Even those who were part of its inner core, Hillary Clinton among them, spend more time talking about the scandals, trying to spin the record, than they do talking about what, exactly and from a policy standpoint, the administration did for eight years.
There is an obvious public hunger for the Clintons. It is not, however, born of respect for their decisive leadership. Rather it is the kind of hunger that pushes "Survivor" or "The Bachelor" to the top of the ratings. It is the unexpected twists and turns. The drama. The "what shoe is going to drop next?" aspect of their lives, which are, for all their protestations about these matters being "private," are lived in a very public fashion.
It should be no surprise that the supposed tabloidization of the media occurred while they were in the White House; it was, after all, a tabloid presidency.
Hillary Clinton is receiving great attention, and from some sections acclaim for her memoirs from an adoring political media corps working overtime on the coverage.
Whether a hidden political motive exists is debatable. What is not debatable is that books about the Clintons and their scandals make money. Television news programs where they are interviewed generate ratings.
ABC's Barbara Walters scored a major coup when Hillary Clinton agreed to give her the first interview on the book. For all the fluff, Walters essentially asked about two things. The first was her presidential prospects.
"Suppose," Walters asked, "those Democrats -- maybe the same ones who said you should run for the Senate -- say you must for the sake of the party run in 2004. Would you categorically say 'No'?" Clinton responded as though the suggestion was a good joke. "I would tell them to take a deep breath -- probably two aspirins and get a good night's sleep."
When it comes to 2008, Clinton did not issue "a Sherman" nor did she say, as some in her own party have urged, that she "fully expects to be supporting the new Democratic president in his bid for re-election." She evaded the issue, assisted quite ably by Walters, who answered her own question as she asked it.
The second thing on everyone's mind: Monica Lewinsky, something every American, if they were truly honest with themselves, would admit.
How do we know? Because three times as many people tuned in to watch Monica's interview than watched Hillary's. And because Monica's relationship with Bill and Hillary's reaction to it is at the heart of almost every interview Hillary Clinton has given since the book came out.
The book may be breaking sales records. Some have claimed it is. A recent USA Today poll of 1,000 adults found that 55 percent of them would not be reading her memoirs. Incredibly, 21 percent said they would not read the book even "if paid to" do so.
The ongoing bid for attention and acceptance from these two politicians is fed by the country's desire to see more of them. Not wishing to be left out of the limelight, Bill Clinton stepped out in front with the idea that the two-term limit on presidential terms should be lifted just before his wife's book came out.
In the middle of her book tour, the rumor he is considering a run for mayor of New York City, home to his post-presidential office but considerably south of his official home in the tiny hamlet of Chappaqua, N.Y., suddenly resurfaces.
Art Buchwald may have put it best when he said, "This is not an easy time for humorists because the government is far funnier than we are."
We are fascinated with the Clintons because they amuse us and they shock us and sometimes amaze us. They captivate us in the same way a collision between a circus train and truckload of fireworks might.
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(The Peter Principles is a regular column on politics, culture and the media by Peter Roff, UPI political analyst and 20-year veteran of the Washington scene.)
