Pareng Bill

Three hours before former US President Bill Clinton’s talk at the Manila Hotel, all the ingredients for disaster were in place. Travel advisory in the wake of a US terror alert, check.

Heavy downpour and streets beginning to flood, check.

Traffic jams in the areas leading to the venue, check. (On a personal note, massive headache that feels like malevolent elves bowling inside my skull, check.)

It was precisely because of these ingredients that the Clinton talk had to be a success. A former president of a nation that had specifically warned its citizens against coming here, was coming here. We had to make it work.

Add to the above ingredients the fact that this is the Philippines, and we are obsessed with the personal lives of politicians. This is true of most people, but especially of Pinoys. You know that no matter what former President Clinton has achieved — two terms in the White House, leading America at a time of unparalleled economic prosperity, the military intervention that ended genocide in Kosovo, and so on — the audience would have a collective grin on its face. In their heads they would hear this line repeated over and over in that charming southern accent:

“Ah deed not hay-uv sex with that woman...” 

Not with a condemnatory attitude — we’re a lot more understanding of human frailty, particularly when sex is involved — but with a kind of wink-wink, nudge-nudge, “Hoy Pare, you ha.” If there is anything we can’t stand, it’s a politician who thinks he’s better than the rest of us. The episode of the intern showed that ex-President Clinton is just like us, give or take 50 IQ points and being married to a woman who could crush us all under the heels of her comfortable pumps. It actually makes us like him more. Americans wouldn’t understand.

Observers have always noted Mr. Clinton’s down-home personal charm, the way he comes across as a regular guy you could have a beer with. I can tell you that if it weren’t for this folksy charm, the audience would’ve lost consciousness halfway through his speech. I can also tell you that when they heard I was going to the talk, about a dozen women and gay men admitted that they had a crush on him. (He does look good, certainly in better shape than when he was president.)

It’s not that the speech was bad, it’s just that we’ve been hearing variations of it from every visiting dignitary and corporate social responsibility advocate. How we live in the most interconnected age in human history. How, if we have stronger civil societies, businesses will be more successful and governments more effective. How we must combat climate change. How the world is entirely too unequal, unstable, and unsustainable. Of course we agree with all these. But we’ve heard them all before (which doesn’t make them wrong, just somewhat soporific in the Siberian air-conditioning of the Manila Hotel tent city).

I did like the way Mr. Clinton ended the talk with an anecdote about the US bid to host the World Cup of Football in 2022. “If you come to America,” he told FIFA, “No matter who makes the final, we can guarantee that we can fill the stadium with a hometown crowd. The great blessing of our country is that we have someone from everywhere. Not least the Philippines.” Thank you for acknowledging the importance of the diaspora and ethnic diversity, even if most Filipinos still have a hard time getting a US visa. 

Up to that point it wasn’t the most scintillating event, and then the Q&A started. The first question moderator Maria Ressa asked was, “You’ve been a long-time observer of the Philippines. You know firsthand each Filipino’s ability and potential. Why do you think our nation hasn’t yet, after People Power, after everything we’ve gone through, why haven’t we been able to fulfill that potential?”

The elves in the bowling alley in my skull were joined by a giant tap-dancing troll. Why did she ask that question? Rather, why do we always do that — ask foreigners to tell us what we’re doing wrong? I know we’re into hand-wringing and beating up on ourselves, but do we have to ask foreigners to join in? Judge us, please.

Well, I thought, she’s a veteran, so maybe she’s laying a trap. She’s trying to get him to deliver a lecture on how we should behave as a nation, so it becomes a headline and we can all be indignant about getting a sermon. How will Mr. Clinton get out of this one?

First there was silence as he seemed to collect his thoughts. Then he said, “On the whole it wasn’t a good advantage for the nation to have been colonized, if you will, by Spain and the United States.”

The elves and the troll in my head fell silent. Did a former president of the United States just sort of apologize for having colonized the Philippines? Could he elaborate?

“You got a lot out of it, but it makes it too easy to make the ties that bind. It’s been great for America... but it takes you very quickly to a level that makes life bearable. But it doesn’t necessarily create the mindset...”

Is a former president of the US saying that America caused our arrested development?

And then Mr. Clinton went off on a riff about Rwanda, forgiveness, and letting go of the past, and the moderator never dragged him back to the matter of our colonial history. 

But we all heard what he said, and I have it on tape. Suddenly my ho-hum assignment was looking pretty thrilling. And since Mr. Clinton is the consummate public speaker, a jazz soloist of the spoken word, he had to go back to the initial theme and tie it up.

“I wouldn’t worry about why you haven’t gotten there,” he said. “I’d worry about what kind of basic ideas should be driven home to get you where you want to go.” 

In short, he was asked a question that could cause a fire, but he contained it by producing a big but brief explosion that sucked up all the oxygen so the fire would die, and then he went out to dinner, and when he came back he advised everybody to get fire insurance. 

Now there’s a politician. Pareng Bill, still the smartest guy in the room.