“…Rosebud…”

The Last Boy Scout turned 40 this week, the age by which conventional wisdom has it that he should have turned from his youthful liberalism to a more mature, pragmatic conservatism. Well, he was way ahead of that curve…

His friends threw him a blowout at a venerable local watering hole, where his regionally-famous band has played off and on for years. Explains why they’d give the club over on a Friday night for a private party. He’s built-up a lifetime of good will in this city (adjacent to Christmas Island) and it all came together for him last night. The bastard even pulled me out of retirement for 5 minutes to jump up on stage and sing “Rockin’ In The Free World” with him.

It was wicked cool. Even the guys in his band were kind and generous with their time with me. I’ve gotten better at picking friends with age - not more friends, just better ones.

Anyhow, the anticipation of the event made him especially cheeky all week. In one email right after Bill Clinton had once again resurrected his wife’s tall Bosnia tale, he gloated, “When he was campaigning for himself, he must have let his handlers make all the decisions, because he doesn’t appear to have the political instincts that everybody previously credited him with.”

I had to let that one sink in. It was his week, after all – birthday on Monday and party on Friday. I didn’t want to get into any partisan sniping unless it was absolutely necessary. As soon as I got home from the club bash, I sat down and banged out a response:

[The suggestion that Bill Clinton was always a fumble-footed political clod] is revisionist thinking. I’ve been culling bits from VHS tapes I made of “Cool TV” back in the ’90s on my Christmas-vintage VHS-to-DVD recorder, and Bill Clinton is all over them. And it turns out Mr. Clinton actually was really, really good back then. Smooth as ice, cool as a cucumber, both quick and thoughtful on his feet... There was a reason his enemies called him “Slick Willie,” because he was. Until Monica, no charge they leveled at him stuck other than “He’s smarter than us, guddurnit!” (Sound of foot stamping in impotent rage.)

This guy currently campaigning for Hillary, by comparison, is like an off-brand knock-off of that guy, or a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox. A pathetic shadow of his former, reliably slippery self.

Did he get stupid in the last eight years? No, his public appearances revealed no trace of his current political dementia till his missus decided to go for the gold ring. Is he off his meds? Is it all part of some multi-phase, long-term Machiavellian construct designed to win Hillary the nomination in the final reel?

I think not. I think the old Silver Fox is still in possession of all of his faculties.

I think he’s taken a look down the road – to the history books yet to be written – and decided getting Hillary elected would be a net loss for his legacy, and I agree with him.

Oliver Stone, well-known conspiracy theorist and regarded as one of the filmmaking community’s leading crazy people, has already done a bio-pic of Dick Nixon (“Nixon”) and is apparently working on a similar project involving our current Pennsylvania Avenue resident, “W.” A few pages of script have leaked, and they suggest Stone is not going to take the even-handed approach with “W” that he did with “Nixon.” Maybe future filmmakers will be more generous, like Bush’s imaginary future historians’ paeans to his cunning foresight...

Reading these few script pages, it suddenly occurred to me, if Hillary gets elected and Oliver Stone was to make a movie about the Bill Clinton presidency, it would likely begin with him getting his knob polished in the Oval Office (after an impeachment montage of actual news clips over the opening credits) and end with Hillary’s inauguration, camera pulling back and Bill lapsing, Rosebud-like, into the shadows.

And I think Bill worries that’s how history will remember him, too. Two asterisks. His entire eight years reduced to a trivia question: What president was both impeached as well as married to the country’s first female president?

So [I said to The Last Boy Scout], go ahead and criticize the sad little red-faced man on the TV news and the YouTube putting his foot in his mouth again and again; I am regrettably compelled to agree with you. But don’t kid yourself that the man did not have game when it was his political career on the line.

And don’t discount the possibility that he still has game and that he still sees his political career as on the line, and deep-sixing his wife’s candidacy is how he aims to protect it.

One asterisk is a black mark. Two are book-ends.