Clinton's Passage: Funny-Sad and Save-the-World

Stuart Mitchner

It's safe to say that multitudes of readers all over the country have been, are, or will soon be reading Bill Clinton's My Life (Knopf $35), which has already, not surprisingly, gone straight to the top of the New York Times best-seller list. You have to wonder how a book so fraught with preconceived notions of the author is being read. My guess is that very few people will read it right through. Quite a few may check the index first and head for "Lewinsky, Monica." More likely, they will start at the beginning and then jump ahead when the going is slow or the details threaten to bury the narrative. Many readers might prefer a condensed edition that reduces the number of favors acknowledged, allies and friends and colleagues gratefully or dutifully saluted.

People who like Clinton will probably like the book. Clinton-haters may enjoy it in spite of themselves or at least the first third of it, assuming they read it at all. It's not the book of a mere score-settler, or an ultra- defensive martinet looking for praise or pity. Clinton's gift is obvious from the beginning. People interest him. He likes them and wants to be liked by them. He relishes the quirky details he finds in teachers, friends, strangers, or relatives. If he wasn't obligated to be his own historian, he might have written a lively, salty novel, something he may well do one of these years.

Among Bill Clinton's goals when he finished law school was to "make a successful political life" and "write a great book." He ends his brief prologue to My Life with these words: "As for the great book — who knows? It sure is a good story." My Life is not a great book but it's a great story. It could have been a classic work of political literature if the author had not committed himself to the requisite inventory of major and minor events his career encompassed, particularly during his two terms as president. He simply has too much ground to cover to provide touches like those that turn up in the earlier chapters where his affectionate fascination with people and eye for human detail are more evident, as when he tells us that "when [Senator Everett] Dirkson talked it was like hearing the voice of God or a pompous snake-oil salesman, depending on your point of view." Or when he shows us Senator William Fulbright at a time when he was one of the lone voices in Congress speaking out against the war in Vietnam: "walking alone down the corridor toward his office, lost in sadness and frustration, actually bumping into the wall a time or two as he trudged to his damnable duty."

The paradox of Clinton's fate is extraordinary and, from his point of view, it has proved to be highly lucrative. To appreciate how many million dollars his enemies added to his advance from Knopf, imagine a Clinton book without the scandal that almost destroyed his presidency. Nothing to do but chronicle achievements and failures. How boring. His enemies gave him an irresistible storyline, helping transform him into a sympathetic, ultimately even triumphant protagonist. What might have been a mere record of activities in the year of his agony becomes a page-turner. Readers who jump ahead to see how the author handles his darkest days are not likely to be bored. Without being polemical or shrill, Clinton simply shows what he was accomplishing and trying to accomplish (in essence, doing good as he saw it) juxtaposed against the relentless intrusions and distractions inflicted by the far-right-wing vendetta that wounded him but failed to bring him down.

For readers who would like intimate glimpses of Bill and Hillary in the days when their marriage was on the line and impeachment was looming, there are two passages, one on either end of the dark-days-of-impeachment story. The first is at Martha's Vineyard in the summer vacation from hell following his admission to his wife of the awful truth, that in fact he did have immoral relations with "that woman."

"I spent the first couple of days alternating between begging for forgiveness and planning strikes on al Qaeda. At night Hillary would go up to bed and I would sleep on the couch."

Even the most accomplished novelist might admire how in two sentences Clinton expresses the merging of the domestic and the profoundly presidential, the funny-sad with save-the-world. How many other political leaders could have captured a complex situation so succinctly and humanely?

And then, after 45 pages detailing his resistance to the slings and arrows he endured from Starr and Company and the mad dog House Republicans, he gives us the bookend to the passage above:

"I almost wound up being grateful to my tormentors. They were probably the only people who could have made me look good to Hillary again. I even got off the couch."

Several incidents from Clinton's youth are used to illustrate how he managed to stand up to and survive those slings and arrows. In one instance he is charged by a ram:

"Before I could get up he butted me in the head. Then I was stunned and hurt and couldn't get up. So he backed up, got a good head start, and rammed me again as hard as he could. He did the same thing over and over again, alternating his targets between my head and my gut. Soon I was pouring blood and hurting like the devil."

The moral, in the context of a ram named Starr? "I learned that I could take a hard hit, a lesson I would relearn a couple more times in my childhood and later in life."

In the Did-You-Know Department. The future president once fantasized about being a doorman at New York's Plaza Hotel. And did you know it was Hillary who made the first move one fateful day in the library at Yale? Or how about the time in a Mexican dive "with a mariachi band, a halfhearted stripper, and a menu that featured ... barbequed goat head. I was so exhausted I fell asleep while the stripper was dancing and the goat head was looking up at me."

Here are some other examples of the flavor of Clinton's style. Talking about leaks to the press. "The White House leaked worse than a tarpaper shack with holes in the roof and gaps in the walls." Or pondering how he had managed to be elected in 1992: "How did Americans come to choose their first baby-boom President, the third youngest in history, only the second governor of a small state, carrying more baggage than an ocean liner?" Or describing a post-election New Age session at Camp David "run by a facilitator" in which "we were supposed to bond by sitting in a group, taking turns telling something about ourselves the others didn't know ... Warren Christopher did participate, probably because he was the most disciplined man on the planet and thought this baby-boomer version of Chinese water torture would somehow strengthen his already considerable character." There are enough such nuggets scattered throughout the nearly 1000 pages to help readers get through the dry stretches.

Even the Bill-haters may be amused to read the note he once left for a burglar, which begins "Dear Burglar":

"Things in my house were so much the same, I could not tell whether or not you actually entered the house yesterday. If not, here is what you will find — a TV which cost $80 new one and a half years ago; a radio which cost $40 new three years ago; a tiny record player that cost $40 new three years ago; and a lot of keepsakes, little things, very few of which cost over $10. Almost all the clothes are over two or three years old. Hardly worth risking jail for."

He signed it "William J. Clinton." The next day while he was at work, the burglar came and took the TV, the radio and the "tiny record player."

The New York Times, which shares some of the blame for the Whitewater debacle, offered two wildly different responses to My Life. Michiko Kakutani trashed the book as a "messy pastiche" ("sloppy, self-indulgent, and often eye-crossingly dull") and the Times ran the hatchet job on the front page. They redeemed themselves somewhat a week later by featuring a strongly positive review by novelist Larry McMurtry, who called it "the richest American presidential autobiography."

Special thanks to Chestnut Tree Books in the Princeton Shopping Center for loaning me the copy of 'My Life' I used for this review.