Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: Imperfect president still sending positive messages

SEARCHING FOR for the perfect president. It continues.

What we have learned the past couple of weeks, and probably deep down knew from the start, is that President Bill Clinton is not perfect. In fact, few of us want to remember his own words in 1992 in the midst of his first presidential campaign because they will jump up to haunt us and make it more difficult to arrive at our own judgments in the current climate.

In short, he said that if we were looking for perfection in him as our president, then don't cast our votes his way because he is not that man. Nevertheless, something or many things he said and did during that campaign and, later, in his re-election campaign caught the voters' attention because we elected him twice -- a first for a Democrat in this half of the 20th century.

I, like every other American, have been thinking a great deal about the fine mess this president has helped us get ourselves into and looking for the revelation, if you will, about what the right course of action is for our country. It was while I was lost in this kind of thought that I tuned into Clinton's address to the parents, teachers and students at Hillcrest Elementary School in Orlando, Fla.

That's where I heard again one of the many reasons I supported and voted for Bill Clinton. And that's where I heard again the reasons why, at the end of this ugly episode we are about to jump headlong into, my judgment will probably be to stay the course.

I heard the president, in the middle of a personal hell that has been mostly of his own making, step up to the podium to talk to the young people of the school, who are proving what many of us believe is what America is all about. That school, you see, is one of the gems sprouting up across America that welcome children from all circumstances to a learning experience that is truly American.

There are the offspring of wealthy families and poor families; black, white, Hispanic and Asian parents and probably a dozen or more ethnicities mixed in; children who can read at higher levels and children who need a little extra help; and kids who have seen the worst of life and the best. They are all at Hillcrest learning what they will need to become the accomplished citizens of tomorrow. They are the people who will lead our country into the thick of the next century in a world in which the unknowns are scarier than at any time in this country's short history.

And there was the president talking to these young people and their parents, telling them what he thought was the right and important course for our country to take. He spoke of the Social Security debate and the need to keep my generation's retirement needs off the backs of those kids who were barely out of kindergarten. And he spoke about the need to make sure that education remains front and center among issues in Congress.

In just a few days the United States will experience its first budget surplus in some 30 years. That fact alone has caused great consternation in the hallowed halls of Congress because many politicians want to see how fast they can give it all back in this election year. There are other, longer-term thinkers who are more concerned about using this opportunity to fix Social Security and make the investments in education that are so evident if we are to maintain or grow our leadership status in the coming decades.

Those were the issues that President Clinton spoke about. And he did so with an enthusiasm similar to that which he had when he was mapping out his vision for America during his campaigns, and which the American people became used to and looked forward to during the first few years of his presidency. It was classic Bill Clinton, and those of us who watched and listened responded the same way we have always done to the good ideas he expressed and the challenges he laid down.

And there, my friends, is the irony. For we all know that Bill Clinton is not the perfect president for which we might yearn. Not even close. But, boy, is he good.

The shame is that but for those kids, parents and administrators in that room at Hillcrest Elementary School and the few of us who just happened to tune in for the televised remarks, no one else heard and saw the man they elected to be their president. If they were watching presidential television, chances are they were listening to the unseemly side of what makes Clinton run. His message -- so clear and so right -- was lost in the sea of troubles that will certainly engulf his presidency in the next few weeks.

So where does that leave us? Leave him? Leave an imperfect presidency? We can talk about all that in the coming days.

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