When Starr talks about Bill Clinton, a hint of envy creeps into his voice, and his words betray a lifelong preoccupation with resume, intellect and reputation. As a young man fresh out of Sam Houston High School in San Antonio, Texas, Starr spent two years at Harding College in Arkansas and eventually came to realize that he and this charismatic Clinton fellow had moved along the same track to Washington--except that Clinton was always ahead. Clinton was at Georgetown when Starr was at George Washington University; Clinton was a Senate aide when Starr was a House aide; Clinton landed a Rhodes scholarship, Starr missed a Marshall. "So there were sort of remarkable and I guess, in retrospect, noteworthy coincidences of activity," says Starr, "although he went on in a much more distinguished way."

Growing up in the South, each must have known people like the other: the golden boy for whom everything came easily and the grind who worked himself to the nub. The one who cut corners and the one who squared them. The one who never got caught and the one who never did anything worth catching.