Then it was the Great Communicator. Capitalism's smartest cowboy, Ronald Reagan took upon himself the historic responsibility of taming the Evil Empire. With Reagan at the helm. Americans had a great sense of domestic well being, matched by Pax Americana's global confidence. Reagan was the feel-good president extraordinaire. The arrival of Bill Clinton marked a tectonic shift in political culture. There he was, in 1992, the baby boomer-in-chief, clothed in the loose garment of Kennedy, glib-talking his way to the heart of America. A few collapsed domestic agendas, some rare handshakes on the White House lawns, a couple of historic signing ceremonies of peace and one Paula Jones later, Clinton is today a presidentially furrowed wise man. He is the Great Reconciler, eager to ``drop a pebble in the pond and have it reverberate all across America''. He wants a national conversation on the newly discovered four-letter word: race. He envisions an America washed clean by racial reconciliation. Great idea, noblesse oblige of the millennial man. But the reconciler seems to be a careless communicator. This from his script of a new world of ethnic and racial hatred: ``From Bosnia to the Middle East to Northern Ireland to Africa to Russia to India -- you name it''. You name it -- but America won't be there. There will be only stereotypes.

In the presidential rhetoric, India is a vast stereotype. Otherwise, how could it have got a place along with Bosnia in the glossary of badlands? To confuse communal mistrust with ethnic bloodlust is profoundly stupid. Of course, President Clinton, the peacemaker-in-chief, knows a few things about places like Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Bosnia and Russia. Perhaps with the exception of Northern Ireland, these places have a history -- sometimes manufactured history -- of war and conquest, of shifting borders and disappearing communities, of little holocausts and false harmony. A case of history being subordinated to ideology, of primordial instincts clashing with modern, democratic impulses. In such a scenario, where does India figure? True, India too has a history of hate. India too has an internationally visible problem called Kashmir. And many things are wrong with India -- but the idea of India is stronger than the sum total of its problems. That is why India survives -- as a nation state. India is not an artificial state, assembled with parts collected from battlefields, unlike yesterday's Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. It's not Bosnia, Mr President.

But this president is busy playing to history. When you play to history, you need sweeping generalisations. And when you happen to be the `First Citizen' of the world, your vision should be big enough to comprehend the complexities of this big bad world. Sadly, Bill Clinton's historical aspirations are bigger than Bill Clinton. This paradox makes his lecture on the bad world a black-and-white cliche: America, always willing to overcome, against the rest of the world, steeped in irreconcilable oddities. You don't have to be either a professional anti-American or a self-righteous Third Worldist to see the absurdity of this presidential wisdom. Any Indian, or any student of history, knows better than Clinton -- that Bill Clinton gets it wrong.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.