PRESIDENT CLINTON is taken with the idea of returning to his alma mater, Oxford University, in a teaching role.
In a conversation with The Times he said that he would "like to go back" and was intrigued by the suggestion that an Oxford college might find a role for him. University officials confirmed last night that there was enormous interest in persuading him to spend a spell in Oxford or become a visiting lecturer.
After his wife Hillary was formally given the Democratic nomination for the New York Senate race, Mr Clinton was lingering on the floor of the Pepsi Arena chatting to party workers when the subject was delicately raised of what he planned to do next and whether he had considered returning to the academic life in Oxford, where he had been a Rhodes Scholar.
"Have they asked me? I'd like to go back," he said emphatically. In a teaching post? He furrowed his brow and laughed. "I don't know if I'd have time to teach. You know, I went back in 1994 and they gave me an honorary degree. That was one of my most wonderful days. One of those beautiful English summer days."
Mr Clinton's chief task when he leaves office is to start making serious money. He has denied offers from Wall Street or Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks and said that he will spend a few days each week in Arkansas supervising the construction of his presidential library and research centre. A former law lecturer at Arkansas University, he is almost certain to hit the international lecture circuit.
Oxford could not hope to compete with the fees that American universities offer for one-off lectures. But the possibility of Mr Clinton returning to teach even for a short spell was greeted with enthusiasm by university officials. Mr Clinton could, in theory, return to assist in the tuition of politics, philosophy and economics.
It is unlikely that any traditional Oxford college would have the facilities necessary to support a former President, but Oxford will shortly have an institution almost designed for the likes of Mr Clinton. The Rothermere American Institute will be able to accommodate six distinguished academic lecturers for periods ranging from a few weeks to several months, and is housed in a spectacular new building which university administrators hoped Mr Clinton might formally open. Professor Byron E. Shafer, Andrew Mellon Professor of Politics at Oxford, said that the institute would wish to concentrate on the "evolution of public life in the United States and who could be more central to that theme than the most recent President Emeritus".
In a conversation with The Times Bill Clinton was intrigued by the suggestion that an Oxford college might find a role for him after his presidency. Damian Whitworth looks back at the President's student years.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY was where President Clinton, as The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd memorably put it, "didn't inhale, didn't get drafted and didn't get a degree".
Mr Clinton hugely enjoyed his two years as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. The books he read, the friends he met and the things he avoided were to influence his life.
He arrived at University College, aged 22, in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War when the university was alive with radicalism and anti-war sentiment. He grew an impressively shaggy beard and certainly attended one anti-war rally in London which came back to haunt him in the 1992 presidential campaign, but on the whole did not become actively involved in student politics. Surprisingly perhaps, given his obsession with politics, nor did he have much to do with the Oxford Union or any of the political clubs. But he relished the opportunity to spend long hours debating with his peers and tutors and fell in love with the city.
His biographer David Maraniss wrote that the boy from Arkansas was so excited when he first arrived that he hardly slept and would spend 14 hours a day just walking the old streets. "He was always the character who wanted to do one more thing, to go to one more place, to stay up one more hour, have one more drink," said a contemporary. Mr Clinton revelled in the social life and the Friends of Bill (FOBs) from those days became keys to his political network. One of his room-mates, Robert Reich, was Labour Secretary in his first Administration and another, Strobe Talbott, is Deputy Secretary of State. Mr Reich is now an academic.
The future President was the only person who was not intimidated by Douglas, the college porter, and would spend hours in his lodge, chatting, answering the phone and passing on gossip. He played rugby, worked on his legendary seduction technique and even made an attempt to woo Germaine Greer. When she gave a speech in which she said she preferred having sex with non-intellectual men, Mr Clinton stood up and asked that if she changed her mind, she consider giving him a try.
His time in Oxford gave rise to one of his most famous remarks. He tried marijuana there, but "didn't inhale". It also caused him one of his stickiest moments during the 1992 campaign when he was accused of deferring the Vietnam draft to study there. The extent of his involvement in anti-war protests has also been argued over. He claims he had little to do with them, but the issue tormented his group. One of his room-mates, Frank Aller, resisted the draft and was arrested. He committed suicide later.
Mr Clinton said he studied PPE, but he was on a less demanding politics course and, like most Rhodes scholars, he did not take a degree. One report noted that Mr Clinton was simply a "satisfactory" student. He claimed to have read 300 books in his first year, some of which, like Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, he likes to carry with him.
The lack of degree was corrected in 1995, when he was awarded an honorary degree in civil law for being, according to Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, "a doughty and tireless champion of world peace". Mr Clinton told the academics that while he was a student, "I always felt a mix of elation and wariness in your presence". But Professor Alan Ryan, director of the Rothermere Institution, said that Mr Clinton was "exactly the sort of distinguished visitor that we would like to attract."
The sole disadvantage of entering the Oval Office at a tender age is that, subject to the occasional assassination attempt, lengthy retirement is inevitable. Bill Clinton will become, on January 20, 2001, the second youngest ex-President in American history. Teddy Roosevelt, the most junior former resident of the White House, found all the rest of his life a frustrating anticlimax. He spent these years first bagging a staggering amount of big game in Africa, then, when bored with that, forming a new political party, running for President once again - losing, but destroying his old colleagues in the Republican Party in the process. As an encore, Mr Roosevelt devoted his last days to the campaign for early, even premature, American entry into the First World War.
Members of the World Wide Fund for Nature, the leaders of the Democratic Party and advocates of international peace will thus be delighted to discover that Mr Clinton has informed The Times that he would rather spend part of his remaining time teaching at Oxford University. It would be a sentimental return to the place from which the President escaped the turmoil of American life in the 1960s.
This is an opportunity that Oxford would be ill-advised to squander. It is not merely the status of a departed US President that should appeal to the dons, but also the sheer number of courses where Mr Clinton might be useful. He would need to lecture on American politics but the university should really exploit the full range of his experience. A man who once informed a Grand Jury that whether or not he had committed perjury depended on the meaning of the word "is" would surely be the very saviour of any philosophy faculty. Mr Clinton's intimate knowledge of the latest DNA testing techniques should be harnessed by the chemistry department. A new course on the technicalities of impeachment could work wonders for the Oxford law course. The gender studies sub-faculty would, though, be best appeased if the amount of hands-on student tuition offered by Mr Clinton were kept to a minimum.
The new Rothermere American Institute in Oxford should take up the President on his plans, and with some urgency. It can be safely assumed that Mr Clinton's lectures would tempt the most lethargic undergraduates from their slumbers. If the university cannot offer one of its most famous sons a formal teaching post then there remains one other route by which he might still be persuaded to come back to Oxford. The President could be invited to complete the B Phil degree in politics (and South-East Asia avoidance studies) that he started three decades ago, but never quite finished.
Click for follow-up items, 20&26/5/01: Alan Ryan's hands up Bill's armpits in purple drape melee, rollerskating college babe licks Chelsea's buns.