Clinton and The Stones of Venice

By WALTER SHAPIRO

A POSTELECTION TOURIST IN VENICE SLIDES INELUCTAbly toward eternal thoughts:

-- How do the world's pigeons divvy up their assignments? Are the best and the brightest in the aviary awarded a nesting place in Piazza San Marco, while the dullards are consigned to bleak window ledges in Detroit?

-- Contemplating the small courtyard that still contains fragments of the boyhood home of Marco Polo, one wonders: Did memories of almost this same scene sustain the 13th century adventurer in his wanderings? Or was happiness for him always the sight of Venice in the rear-view mirror?

-- Why is the model for America in decline always cold, dreary and class-riven Britain, and not warm and enveloping Italy, where thoughts of the trade deficit fade in anticipation of the next glorious meal?

Funny how the loss of national self-confidence changes one's perception of other American tourists. Instead of wincing at the sight of fellow countrymen (that vintage lament "Why do the wrong Americans go abroad?"), now takes a perverse pride in spotting an overdressed couple from Houston berating a desk clerk or a homesick American family dashing into a Venetian Wendy's. The U.S. cannot be that broke, comes the comforting thought, since some of us still have enough credit left on our charge cards to venture abroad. As the outdoor piano in front of Florian cafe plays Feelings, there is an irresistible urge to gauge world prosperity by categorizing vacationers by nationality: a large Japanese tour group; seven Germans all with guidebooks; three French couples (undoubtedly sneering at the food); and -- yea, team! -- five certifiable Americans.

An American in Venice cannot help feeling marginal, neither sharing in the borderless bounty of the E.C. nor joining the Japanese in their shopping-bag odyssey of the great boutiques of Europe. But then an Italian newsstand beckons -- and suddenly it's the American Century all over again. Who is that carefully coiffed blond woman staring intently from the cover of a glossy Italian magazine? A Roman film star? Princess Di? No, it's Hillary Clinton. Newspaper headlines in four languages refer familiarly to a global personality instantly recognizable as just plain "Bill."

These days, many Americans would be hard pressed to name any world leader aside from, perhaps, Boris Yeltsin. Imagine the puzzlement if U.S. headline writers began invoking first names like Helmut (Kohl) or Kiichi (Miyazawa). But all through Europe, Bill and Hillary have suddenly become as familiar as other one-word American icons like Madonna, Magic and McDonald's. Is this Clinton mania merely the latest manifestation of the one eternally booming U.S. industry -- the creation of international celebrities -- or does it speak to something larger about the worldwide perception of both America and its new President-elect?

Part of it is simply a natural fascination with the new. A year ago, about the only people in Europe who had ever heard of Bill Clinton were former Oxford classmates. In contrast to the parliamentary democracies and their endless reshuffling of shopworn faces, America stands unique in its willingness to entrust power to outsiders. Hillary Clinton adds an unexpected twist -- a woman who has earned her place among the shapers of policy through merit as well as marriage. For Europeans, the choice seems clear: Would you rather read about the Clintons or the squabble over agricultural subsidies in the GATT negotiations?

Habit also explains this fixation on the newly elected President. For nearly half a century, the character and the resolve of the U.S. President mattered to Europeans in the most visceral sense -- survival. The nuclear football that Clinton will inherit on Jan. 20 now seems almost a cold war anachronism, but the tendency to look anxiously toward Washington remains an inborn trait. The human mind abhors a power vacuum; even in the dying years of the Roman Empire, free men could probably rattle off the names and pedigrees of Emperors like Petronius Maximus, Majorian and Severus.

How tempting it is for a star-spangled American patriot to view Europe's growing Bill-and-Hillary fascination as proof that the world still needs a strong and resolute U.S. Europe's woeful incapacity to stop the near genocidal carnage in Bosnia buttresses this argument, as do the American troops whose orders read "Somalia." Yet imagine the reaction if the new Democratic President were someone older and grayer, a Walter Mondale, say, or a Lloyd Bentsen. An aura of anticipation? Unlikely. Rather, the likely response would be a halfhearted shrug at business as usual in the global amphitheater.

Only in America has power been passed to a new generation that defines the world in terms of post-cold-war economic realities. The John Kennedy parallel is inescapable -- how vividly his sporting vitality contrasted with the solemn visages of Harold Macmillan, Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer. Once again it seems apt to recall William Wordsworth's lines in thrall of the French Revolution: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very Heaven!"

If there is a message amid the decaying grandeur of Venice, it is the transience of power and glory. The romance surrounding the accession of Bill Clinton is destined to be ephemeral -- politics and poetry, by their very nature, cannot coexist for long. But for a moment, an American tourist amid the stones of Venice can bask in the awareness that his troubled nation has embraced the future and that the Old World is witnessing this leap of political faith with covetous eyes.