Two Bills 全.doc

A Tale of Two Bills ------By ADAM COHEN When Bill Clinton and Bill Gates played golf on Marthas Vineyard a few years ago, they didnt click. The President gave Gates a heavy dose of the Clinton Treatment, oozing charm and seeking emotional common ground in the fact that both had recently lost their mothers. Clinton must have been disappointed by the cool response of Gates, who saw the subject as unduly personal. Gates, for his part, was put off that Clinton didnt engage him on his favorite topic, technology. When the golfing ended, the two men went their separate ways. Gates didnt take sides in the Clinton-Dole election a couple of years later. Clinton let his Justice Department pursue a potentially devastating antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. Its not hard to see why these two larger-than-life figures--one the worlds most powerful man, one the richest--didnt become fast friends. The two Bills are as different as the two ends of the baby-boom generation they represent. Clinton, who entered college in 1964, is dripping with Sixties values: a John F. Kennedy-style belief in public service as a calling; an Age-of-Aquarius focus on emotional connection; and a countercultural streak of sex, drugs, and rock n roll. Gates, who came of age in the 1970s, has a Watergate-era detachment from politics, a mind-set more me-generation than love-in, and a passion for the great revolutionary force of his own decade: the personal computer. But Clinton and Gates are remarkably alike in other ways, particularly in their flaws. Both have almost limitless drive and self-absorption, and a willingness to push the rules to the edge--or past it--to get what they want. When called to account, both have been dismissive of the legal process and have had a strained relationship with the truth. These qualities have landed both men in similar binds: Clinton is waiting to hear if he will be removed from office, Gates is fending off the Justice Departments effort to rein in, or even carve up, Mic