Posted on 06/13/2004 8:33:09 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
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s former President Bill Clinton prepares for a barrage of publicity and a cross-country tour to promote his memoirs, his political advisers are consulting with the Democratic Party and Senator John Kerry's campaign about ways that Mr. Clinton can lend a political hand in the process.
Mr. Clinton received an advance of more than $10 million to write his memoirs, "My Life," and aides to the former president say his first priority now is to sell as many books as possible.
But they also say that whenever his book-selling obligations allow, Mr. Clinton is eager to pitch in for the party by plugging Mr. Kerry and subtly putting down Republicans at book-selling events, and by speaking at fund-raisers or campaign stops on his tour.
He is also going out of his way not to overshadow Mr. Kerry.
For example, Democratic Party officials said Mr. Clinton was scheduled to speak on the first night of the party's convention in Boston, but executives of Knopf, which is publishing "My Life," said that to keep the spotlight on Mr. Kerry, he did not plan to hold a book signing or other event while in town.
"He wants to make sure that there is no way that anything he does is competing with or intruding on the attention paid to Senator Kerry," Steve Richetti, Mr. Clinton's top political adviser, said. "We have met with the campaign so that they can be aware of what we are doing and where we are going. He wants to be helpful in any way that he is asked. He knows John Kerry and he likes him a lot and thinks he would be a great president. At book events, I think he will be asked about and he will be able to talk about John Kerry in a very thoughtful and compelling way."
Mr. Clinton's efforts to help Mr. Kerry are fraught with risks, Democratic strategists say, including the danger of arousing the legions of Clinton-haters, the possibility of upstaging the candidate himself, and campaign finance rules restricting publicity expenditures around an election. For months, Democratic strategists have worried that if Mr. Clinton's book appeared too close to the election, he could hog the limelight and upstage Mr. Kerry. In the last election, Vice President Al Gore sought to distance himself from Mr. Clinton on the campaign trail rather than risk association with the scandals surrounding his administration.
Christine Iversen, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, argued that Mr. Clinton's popularity would prove as much of a liability for Mr. Kerry as an asset. "If Bill Clinton is the most energizing Democrat available, he is not on the ballot, and that is a problem," she said.
Richard Stengel, a former national editor of Time magazine and now president of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, said: "It is one of those things that is a double-edged sword. You don't know if it is going to blow up in your face or it is going to blow up on the other side."
But unlike Mr. Gore, Mr. Kerry plans to embrace Mr. Clinton, capitalizing on his support as much as possible in places where he is popular, aides to Mr. Kerry said. The two men speak personally roughly once every 10 days, their aides said.
"I intend to get him to campaign as much as he can," Mr. Kerry said in a recent interview about Mr. Clinton's book. "I think he's good."
A Democratic Party official, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed that the party saw opportunity in Mr. Clinton's tour. "If Bill Clinton wants to crisscross the country reminding everyone at every stop that when a Democrat was in the White House things were better, all the more power to him, we say,'' the official said. "And if he wants to sell some books, God bless him."
Larry Noble, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics and a former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, said the current campaign finances rules allowed plenty of room for Mr. Clinton to criticize Mr. Bush or to endorse Mr. Kerry at appearances paid for by his publisher, as long as his principal purpose is selling the book, and especially if political debates are part of its subject. He added that the restrictions on personal appearances or speeches were far looser than those on broadcasts.
Still, Mr. Noble said, the rules are gray enough that "I am willing to bet that complaints will be filed against the publisher as Clinton goes around on his tour, because that is just the nature of the beast."
Robert Barnett, the lawyer for Mr. Clinton who negotiated his book deal, said, "In every respect, all applicable laws and regulations will be scrupulously followed."
Paul Bogaards, Knopf's publicity director, said the company was not worried about any possible perceptions that Mr. Clinton was using the tour for partisan purposes. "At the end of the day it is the strength of the work that people are going to come to," he said.
For several months, beginning even before Mr. Clinton had finished the manuscript, a so-called war room brain trust consisting of members of his legal, public relations and other staffs as well as Mr. Bogaards, has convened for a daily conference call to weigh a host of political and commercial considerations in charting a marketing campaign for the book, Mr. Bogaards said. They discuss not only how to reach Mr. Clinton's admirers, Mr. Bogaards said, but also how to protect against attacks from his enemies.
Knopf, part of the Random House division of Bertelsmann, is kicking off publication on June 22 with a party for 1,000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Flooded with desperate requests for access to Mr. Clinton, the team has taken advantage of its unusual leverage to reach an extraordinary series of deals filling the airwaves with Mr. Clinton and his voice during the week of publication. For five days leading up to publication, Infinity Broadcasting, which owns news radio stations in big cities around the country, and America Online, the most popular Internet service, will play a new recording of Mr. Clinton reading a single self-contained anecdote from the book each day.
On the Sunday before publication, Dan Rather will interview Mr. Clinton for the full hour on "60 Minutes." On the day of publication, Oprah Winfrey will interview him for another hour. The next day, "Today" on NBC and "Good Morning America" on ABC have dropped their customary requirements of exclusivity to run competing taped interviews with Mr. Clinton simultaneously. On Monday, Knopf expects to confirm the first 10 stops on Mr. Clinton's book tour, although stores and locations in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities have already reserved dates pending approval. People involved with planning the tour said explicitly political considerations had not yet come up in picking locations, partly because the first locations were determined by the size of the markets and the suitability of the venues.
But the publisher's commercial interest also dovetails with the Kerry campaign's goal of dispatching him to the places where he is most popular, Kerry aides say. In addition to picking the biggest book-buying markets, Mr. Bogaards said, the publisher is using sales data to identify locations where Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoirs sold well.
Mr. Bogaards said Knopf also planned to send Mr. Clinton to places where books appealing to African-Americans sell well, beginning with a signing at the Hue-Man Bookstore near his office in Harlem on the day of publication, in part because he is popular among blacks.
During a speech at a booksellers' convention in Chicago this month, Mr. Clinton demonstrated his deft hand at turning discussions of his memoirs into a subtle attack on President Bush. He digressed into what he called the takeover of the Republican Party by "the religious right." "Politics is not religion, and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology," he said.
Heh, heh. Making him an offer he can't refuse, eh?
Clinton Planning to Use Book Tour to Assist KerryOh, right. Because the charismatic and oh-so-sensual John F. Kerry so benefits by comparison to the body-on-a-slab-at-the-morgue Clinton demeanor.
" Mr. Bogaards said Knopf also planned to send Mr. Clinton to places where books appealing to African-Americans sell well,
beginning with a signing at the Hue-Man Bookstore near his office in Harlem on the day of publication, in part because he is popular among blacks. "
The Hue Man Bookstore in Harlem....
""Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book." --- Ronald Reagan
I hope Ketchup Boy has Bubba at his side as much as possible!
Clinton's book is anti-climatic. Everyone knows what went on during his eight years as POTUS. We know what BillyBoy did in the Oval Office. And it was obviously a lot more then he did upstairs, in the family quarters.
I will refrain from changing channels for the next couple of weeks for fear of seeing the scoundrel.
"Mr. Clinton received an advance of more than $10 million to write his memoirs, "My Life," and aides to the former president say his first priority now is to sell as many books as possible."
If anyone thinks that al Querry will be a priority for the Clintoon, they have a severe mental condition and should be locked up for their safety.
Does anyone here believe this? .........
Perhaps Ol' John Feckless Kerry has heard and heeded the old saw, 'Keep your friends close but your enemies closer'.
Whereas his sex life is auto-climactic.
And that sounds to me like coordination between hard and soft money, especially if Clintoon's publisher is paying the book tour tab.
But, the question will never be allowed to be asked. Willie is all ego and his legacy is far more important that anything else. Well, except, maybe, black hookers!
So what are the rough things they say to each other? Some examples would help.
Leslie Stahl said "Clinton's book is the biggest story of the summer".
Dream on haggatha
"Mr. Clinton received an advance of more than $10 million to write his memoirs, "My Life,""
George Sorea$$ probably advanced about $9,999,999 of the 10 million. The rats got a loan for the remainder.
But Mr Clinton, wasn't it the DNA evidence of your lack of religious observance that brought your administration down?
Apparently Clinton just sat down for a couple weeks with a couple ounces and scribbled random thoughts.
It contains such shallow thinking as "we should reach a compromise with the terrorists because we can't kill or imprison all of them." How do you compromise with fanatics who believe Allah has commanded them to kill or convert all Americans. Agree to let them kill half of us?
Clinton didn't even try to write a book of significant value, he just turned in enough words to get his ten million dollars.
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