c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of “My Brother Joseph,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

(UNDATED) There is something touching in the restless urgency with which President Clinton pursues his “legacy.”

Have we heard of this plight before? Perhaps in that gospel parable of the foolish women who had garishly lighted up the night with their lamps only to find that they had no oil left and, hearing the footfall of their master, searched vainly for more. Clinton, it might be said, has also lighted up the night garishly and finds now that wisps of smoke are all that is left to play against the falling night.

Now he wants an Olympic torch of remembrance. He is left _ as the impulsive women in the gospel were, and we all are _ with how we used our oil, what light we gave or withheld, with our permanent record, as brutally revealing about us as our check stubs.

His legacy, which he is powerless to change, is the product of his style, the amoral lack of grace under pressure that settles for quickness in both fixes and exits from the scene.

This is touching because Clinton, with a rock star’s need for attention and affection, cannot now alter what he has left behind. His legacy is in the papers every day, indeed, on the front page of The New York Times for Sunday, Feb. 27, 2000.

Two major stories detailed the marks _ scars, really _ he has left on the world: “Torn City Mirrors Hard Kosovo Task” and “Warning by China to Taiwan Poses Challenge to U.S.”

Each tells of a failed Clinton policy that, staggering the powers of the geopolitical imagination, has made bad situations intolerable on opposite sides of the Earth. This is Clinton’s version of globalization _ to apply Arkansas ethics to the whole world. These are Me-First moves that guarantee him a seat on the lifeboat when the ship of state _ whether in Kosovo, Taiwan, Northern Ireland, the Mideast or Haiti _ finally goes down.

This bleak legacy is illustrated in our relations with China, with whom the president apparently thought he could deal, Arkansas style, campaign funds gratefully accepted, and call it a foreign policy. Now “China’s abrupt shift to a more aggressive stance on Taiwan left the Clinton administration scrambling this week for a response and struggling to temper increased pressure for new sales of sophisticated arms to Taiwan.”

This boiling situation pales compared to Kosovo, which bids, in the 21st century, to break the records for suffering it set in the 20th. Where the president’s air war ended but peace never came, the “violence in Mitrovica symbolizes (the) Western failure in the region.”

In Northern Ireland, the truce Clinton might well have taken pride in has broken down, as have the talks in the Mideast. Is more estrangement and bloodshed the unfortunate inheritance he has, well intended or not, left to these people who have a deeper and more intimate knowledge of suffering than they ever will of solace?

Haiti, the tortured half-island from which American servicemen have been quietly withdrawing, is a classic Clinton intervention. In 1994, he sent off great ships and called them back, dispatched former President Jimmy Carter and Gen. Colin Powell, and hesitated until the last possible moment before announcing an arrangement avoiding armed invasion. Several years later, he has increased rather than lessened the pain and turmoil of that country.

In his costly delays, Clinton exhibited his hack-politician principles _ the readiness to wait, irrespective of consequences, because something may happen to bail them out: Somebody could die, a natural disaster could occur, they could discover a political opponent in a compromising situation. The latter, thanks to Clinton, hardly applies now.

This is the dynamic of leader who, like a landlord refusing to pay for a new roof, just wants it to last through this rainy season. He’ll think about it again in the next rainy season. Who can tell, such politicians shrug. We may have a drought and we’ll all stay dry.

Commentators often rationalize Clinton’s flat-line morality with some variation of “But he is a superb politician.” Is he, really? After all, a superb politician thinks of other people at least some of the time. In his new book, columnist Jack Germond calls Clinton the most selfish of the many presidents he has observed.

Clinton’s legacy is a function of his self-absorption and his heroic narcissism. He has left a sad stations of the cross stretching around the world. It is tragic because what he has done with such amoral dash cannot be altered and what he might have done can never be realized.

DEA END KENNEDY