Citizen Clinton

(3 of 4)

No doubt Clinton's enemies will have a field day with that. No doubt his account of the struggle with "my old demons" will seem disingenuous to many readers. No doubt Clinton will feel--as he did when he became the first presidential candidate to admit that his marriage had not "been perfect"--that he has gone the extra mile, established a new level of candor in presidential memoirs and not received any credit for it. Of course, the sum of Clinton's presidency and memoirs is not the struggle against Starr. But the intensity of his feelings on that subject tends to put everything else--the substantive achievements and the embarrassments like the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich--on the back burner. He spends very little time in the book discussing the intricacies of domestic issues like health care, welfare reform and even his triumphant economic policy. He spends more time on foreign affairs, especially the failed Middle East peace negotiations. Though he has said he would have liked to take a "mulligan," or do-over, for the Rich pardon, he defends it here: "I may have made a mistake, at least in the way I allowed the case to come to my attention"--that is, through the special pleadings of Rich's wife and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak--"but I made the decision based on the merits."

My Life is two books, really: Arkansas and the presidency. It is no secret that Clinton wanted to write two separate books but was dissuaded by his publisher, Knopf. In My Life he has written the first one and compiled the other. In our interview, Clinton said the haphazard account of the presidential years was intentional: "It's much more like a diary of what it's like to be President." There are an awful lot of passages like "In mid-month, Hillary and I flew to St. Louis, where I signed the Mississippi River flood relief legislation ... Then we flew on to Denver, where we welcomed Pope John Paul II to the United States." Of course, those sorts of passages are a chronic disease in presidential memoirs.

Embedded in the travel logs are occasional nuggets of brilliant political analysis. His discussion of Al Gore's 2000 "the people vs. the powerful" campaign slogan, for example, combines smart analysis and a haymaker: "The problem with the slogan was that it didn't give Al the full benefit of our record of economic and social progress or put into sharp relief Bush's explicit commitment to undo that progress. Also, the populist edge sounded to some swing voters as if Al, too, might change the economic direction of the country."

The arrival of My Life will doubtless cause several weeks of hemming, hawing and projectile pontification. It will be a brief return to the noxious '90s, a brouhaha for which not many people are nostalgic. Already, parasitic blasts from the past--people like Larry Klayman and David Bossie who made their reputations at Clinton's expense--are issuing press releases announcing their availability for comment. John Kerry cannot be pleased, even though Clinton hopes this latest Comeback Tour will remind the public of the depredations of those who are attacking Kerry now. As for the White House, two weeks of Clinton bashing on Fox News will certainly be more fun than two weeks of Iraq apologetics.