Total Recall

It's easy to enter an intellectual coma on the last day of exams (or even earlier) and sleep through the summer without ever picking up a newspaper or watching the evening news. So in case you missed Dan Rostenkowski's stamp-gate, the White House's suicide-gate, Ross Perot's talk-show-gate, General John Shalikashvili's Nazi-gate and Jesse Helm's Dixie-gate, here are the highlights of the summer of 1993.

June

Three-time Republican advisor David Gergen came to work his charm on a White House that blamed a "lurch to the left" rather than incompetence and arrogance for President Clinton's dramatic descent into Gallup Poll hell.

At a time when most people were embarrassed to admit they had any ties to the president, Clinton half-brothers and half-sisters began to appear almost daily.

With the genocide in Bosnia worsening, the U.S. decided it was time to fight for democracy abroad--by punishing Iraq for an alleged assassination attempt on George Bush. Though Americans were assured that the bombs targeted only an Iraqi intelligence building, newspaper stories of dead civilians soon abounded.

Another campaign promise went the way of NASA's Mars probe when Clinton decided to renew China's most-favored-nation trade status with the U.S., though he insisted on human rights progress in the future. To prove how seriously they take Clinton's threats, the Chinese sentenced a journalist to life imprisonment for giving a Hong Kong newspaper an advance copy of an official speech. Meanwhile, Beijing celebrated the growing freedom in China with a bid to host the 2000 Olympics.

July

Clinton accompanied the march of midget leaders to Tokyo, behaving like a rock star for the Japanese crowds, while Hillary was uncharacteristically submissive and silent. In an election later that month, the Japanese responded to Clinton-esque calls for change and threw the Liberal Democratic Party rascals out.

In typical Clinton style, the president angered both homosexuals and military bigots with a don't-ask-don't-even-think-about-it "compromise" that keeps gays in the closet but gives them a peephole. In a policy consistent with the inconsistency that has become a military trademark, homosexual soldiers will be allowed to tell people they're gay, as long as they then can prove they were only kidding.

Media conspiracy buffs saw something sinister in the fact that Clinton initially said he had no idea why Vince Foster shot himself, and then--like anyone whose friend commits suicide--remembered things that in hindsight could be seen as warning signals.

The White House avoided complying with U.S. immigration laws by bullying Mexico into dealing with a boatload of Chinese refugees. Exhibiting the same hostility toward immigrants that Americans have denounced in Germany (and demonstrating the same there's-a-constitutional-amendment-for-every-contr oversy attitude that brought us the flag burning amendment and the balanced budget amendment), California Gov. Pete Wilson proposed to change the U.S. Constitution so that being born in America would no longer automatically make people American.

Carol Moseley Braun embarrassed the Senate and persuaded over 30 senators to reverse their earlier vote to renew a patent on the Confederate flag. An angry and increasingly immature Jesse Helms threatened to sing Dixie until Sen. Moseley Braun cried, and then challenged her credentials as a genuine descendant of slaves. No one investigated Helms' own lineage to see if he is a genuine descendant of slaveowners.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg bored the nation and charmed the Senate on her way to being confirmed as the second woman Supreme Court Justice. Since no one ever thought this frail woman would face Clarence Thomas-like allegations, her nomination lacked the suspense and excitement we've come to expect.

After tripping on a curb and breaking his arm in front of television cameras, William Sessions was further humiliated by becoming the first FBI director ever to be fired by the president. The appointment of Louis Freeh to replace him excited some FBI agents so much they delayed their plans to retire so they could serve under their former colleague for a while.

President Clinton nominated the son of a Nazi to replace a charismatic homophobe as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Dan Rostenkowski moved steadily closer to indictment, but politics forced Clinton to stand by his man.

Surgeon General nominee Joycelyn Elders made little effort to ingratiate herself with her conservative detractors, defiantly defending her radical belief that condoms are a more effective shield against teen pregnancy than moralistic admonitions to "just say no."

August

Clinton's budget passed, but presidential wannabe Bob Kerrey stole headlines by posturing pathetically for days and finally giving an eloquent speech that would have been noble a month earlier but instead was only self-serving and arrogant.

Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld raised his 1996 presidential stock by proposing to cut state taxes as relief from the Clinton tax increases. And Ted Kennedy strengthened his often-tenuous hold on his job by raising enough money to scare Weld out of running for Senate next year.

Lord Owen's desperation became clear as he sided with Serbian rapists against the besieged Bosnians. Just when this pressure pushed the Bosnian president toward the negotiating table, incompetent Secretary of State Warren Christopher tempted him to back out by flirting once again with American air strikes.

In Denver, Clinton shielded the Pope from the rain, while the man who opposes condom use as a way to prevent AIDS lectured the president on the value of life.

An initially heroic humanitarian effort in Somalia deteriorated into an inept, farcical manhunt worthy of the Three Stooges and reminiscent of the 1989 Manuel Noriega fiasco. The search for Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed reached a comic low when 50 elite U.S. Army Rangers, acting on special "intelligence," stormed a building rumored to house Aideed's rebels--only to find a bunch of U.S. foreign aid workers, whom they promptly arrested.

A march celebrating the 30th anniversary of the 1963 Civil Rights march on Washington flopped because its organizers were unorganized.

Ethics, Egos and Acts of God

Mother Nature gave TV meteorologists their 15 minutes in the national spotlight. A heat wave battered the East Coast, while floods in the Midwest produced, ironically, water shortages. The flooding allowed politicians from the lowa state house to the White House to do what they do best: express sympathy and hand out money.

Ross Perot continued his demagogic quest for attention, but every time he was asked for specific numbers to back up his grandiose plans, he said he had left them at home. Seems he didn't expect journalists and talk show hosts to actually ask him questions. By the end of the summer, even Jay Leno was challenging Perot's jingoistic race-baiting.

A switched-at-birth case was resolved when a Florida teenager legally gave her biological parents the finger, while another game of musical parents ended with Jessica DeBoer returning to the "mom" who gave her up for adoption and the "dad" who was no where to be found when she was born.

In Pennsylvania, we learned one family's answer to an old "what would you do?" ethics question, when a baby's life was sacrificed to give her Siamese twin a one percent chance at life. An emotional human interest story soon gave way to sensationalist scandal-mongering when it turned out the twins' father was buying cocaine with money that was donated for his daughter's hospital care.

A still-desolate Homestead Florida marked the anniversary of Hurricane Andrew as North Carolina and Virginia braced for Hurricane Emily.

Bob Dole split his time between Washington and New Hampshire, ensuring that by 1996 voters in both places will be just as sick of him as they are of Clinton.