lamb: what was your experiences being a clerk to abner mikva, the former congressman from illinois?ax: right. lamb: and council to bill clinton? what was that like? wax: well, it was wonderful. he's a terrific person, a great judge, was very nice to his clerks, the highest intellectual caliber, and of course, my co-clerks were also wonderful as well, so i thoroughly enjoyed that experience. i don't think he and i were necessarily so eye to eye, politically, although at that point in my life, that was back in the 1980's, 1987, 1988, i guess i was there, i wasn't particularly politically aware. i didn't think about politics all that much and i think the general atmosphere was less polarized, far less polarized than it is now, so judges and clerks didn't really have to match up. there was no feeling that clerks had to be on the same page, have the same ideas. the notion was that law was this autonomous field that should be depoliticized as much as possible and that was the right way to do it. so we got along just fine, and i have -- i enjoyed that experience. that was the year, actuall