Was Bill Clinton the poor mans J F Kennedy?
“Camelot: the sequel” ends its eight-year run this week. Three thousand nights of adrenalin highs and colonic lows, great box office, but a vapid book, forgettable lyrics and not one tune that you could carry past the lobby. The thousand days of the original may not have accomplished much more than defining a transitional moment in America between a wartime generation and the baby boomers. The sequel did not enjoy even that symbolic value. It merely interrupted a slow-motion counter-revolution led by the older crowd. Bill Clinton certainly established himself as a star, a legend even, in the vein of Jack Kennedy, the hero of the original and Clinton’s personal hero, too. The parallels are obvious, if shallow: the age of both men, the energy, the devotion to lifting legal and social discrimination from people of colour and to helping the poor find a place in the system. They could both seize a crowd in a moment, or develop an enduring friendship with a nod – but then, that is the role o
