WASHINGTON – I played tennis last week with William
J. Clinton. And he didn’t cheat.
And there were no bimbos in black berets cheering him
on. No Secret Service agents. No donut breaks.
That’s because it wasn’t that Bill Clinton. My
opponent was William Joseph Clinton.
But he’s often confused – famously so – for the
former president, even though he’s a Republican. (He
is a lefty like Clinton, however, and has a fair
southpaw slice on his first serve, when he gets it
in.)
It’s not that he looks like ol’ Slick. The
bespectacled CPA more resembles Kenneth Starr. In
fact, he could be his stunt double.
You see, Bill the bean-counter used to live within
walking distance of the White House (in, believe it or
not, a white house) and was listed in the D.C. phone
book under “William J. Clinton.” This was long before
William Jefferson moved into the neighborhood, and
William Joseph never had a problem with the listing.
But as soon as the Clampetts, er, Clintons, rolled
into town, the mild-mannered accountant was flooded
with calls from just about every dope from every city
in the country thinking he was the new president. He
got so many calls – averaging five to 10 a week –
that he got an unlisted number when he moved to
Gaithersburg, Md., in 2000.
That’s right, people actually thought the president
commuted to the Oval Office. (Now I finally understand
how Bill Clinton got elected twice: A lot of voters
aren’t just suckers, they’re full-blown lobotomy
patients.)
During our men’s singles-league match, Clinton retold
the story, first reported by the Washington Post, of
how citizens would call and ply him with questions
about everything from guns to Monica to taxes. They
would actually carry on a conversation as if they had
the president himself on the other end of the line –
even though this Bill Clinton sounds nothing like that
Bill Clinton. No raspy voice, no drawl.
Once, a hothead called him to gripe about the
middle-class tax burden. The man said Clinton promised
him a tax cut and demanded to know when he was going
to get it. When he started cussing, Clinton warned him
that the Secret Service was listening in on the line,
and if he didn’t cool down, he’d sic the IRS on him.
The guy quickly hung up.
Instead of his usual response to callers of – “No,
this is not the president; he lives in the White
House” – Clinton started saying he didn’t have time
to chat because he was running late for a Cabinet
meeting.
After a few years, he decided to have some real fun
with it. He left a recording for a while on his
answering machine saying he was at Camp David, and
would return calls when he got back. He says he didn’t
try to imitate Beelzebubba’s voice in any of his
recordings.
Yet over two presidential terms, some 1,000 wing-nuts
actually left messages on his machine expecting the
nation’s chief executive to return their calls.
Clinton, who does nonprofit contract work for the
Labor Department, recently moved to another suburb.
With Clinton long gone, he felt it was safe to list
his number again, and he no longer gets calls from
people dumber than bags of rocks.
Nice guy, this Bill Clinton. Oh yeah, I won the match,
6-1, 6-3.
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