lol.. Not likely..
Posted on 06/19/2004 11:43:23 AM PDT by AM2000
As his celebrated 1993 speech in Memphis to the Church of God in Christ demonstrated, former President Bill Clinton is capable of soaring eloquence and visionary thinking. But as those who heard his deadening speech nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta well know, he is also capable of numbing, self-conscious garrulity.
Unfortunately for the reader, Mr. Clinton's much awaited new autobiography "My Life" more closely resembles the Atlanta speech, which was so long-winded and tedious that the crowd cheered when he finally reached the words "In closing . . ."
The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.
In many ways, the book is a mirror of Mr. Clinton's presidency: lack of discipline leading to squandered opportunities; high expectations, undermined by self-indulgence and scattered concentration. This memoir underscores many strengths of Mr. Clinton's eight years in the White House and his understanding that he was governing during a transitional and highly polarized period. But the very lack of focus and order that mars these pages also prevented him from summoning his energies in a sustained manner to bring his insights about the growing terror threat and an Israeli-Palestinian settlement to fruition.
Certainly it's easy enough to understand the huge advance sales for the book. Mr. Clinton would seem to have all the gifts for writing a gripping memoir: gifts of language, erudition and charm, combined with a policy wonk's perception of a complex world at a hinge moment in time, teetering on the pivot between Cold War assumptions and a new era of global interdependence. Add to that his improbable life story — a harrowing roller-coaster ride of precocious achievements, self-inflicted slip-ups and even more startling comebacks — and you have all the ingredients for a compelling book.
But while Dan Rather, who interviewed Mr. Clinton for "60 Minutes," has already compared the book to the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, arguably the most richly satisfying autobiography by an American president, "My Life" has little of that classic's unsparing candor or historical perspective. Instead, it devolves into a hodgepodge of jottings: part policy primer, part 12-step confessional, part stump speech and part presidential archive, all, it seems, hurriedly written and even more hurriedly edited.
In fact, "My Life" reads like a messy pastiche of everything that Mr. Clinton ever remembered and wanted to set down in print; he even describes the time he got up at 4 a.m. to watch the inaugural ceremonies for Nigeria's new president on TV. There are endless litanies of meals eaten, speeches delivered, voters greeted and turkeys pardoned. There are some fascinating sections about Mr. Clinton's efforts to negotiate a Middle East peace agreement (at one point, he suggests that Yasir Arafat seemed confused, not fully in command of the facts and possibly no longer at the top of his game), but there are also tedious descriptions of long-ago political debates in Arkansas over utility regulation and car license fees . There are some revealing complaints about missteps at the FBI under Louis Freeh's watch , but there are also dozens of pointless digressions about matters like zombies in Haiti and ruins in Pompeii.
Mr. Clinton confesses that his affair with Monica Lewinsky was "immoral and foolish," but he spends far more space excoriating his nemesis, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, and the press. He writes at length about his awareness that terrorism was a growing threat, but does not grapple with the unintended consequences of his administration's decisions to pressure Sudan to expel Osama bin Laden in 1996 (driving sent the al Qaeda leader to Afghanistan, where he was harder to track) or to launch cruise missile attacks against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the embassy bombings in 1998 (an act that some terrorism experts believe fueled terrorists' conviction that the United States was an ineffectual giant that relied on low-risk high technology).
Part of the problem, of course, is that Mr. Clinton is concerned, here, with cementing — or establishing — his legacy, while at the same time boosting (or at least not undermining) the political career of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. He does a persuasive job of explicating his more successful initiatives like welfare reform and deficit reduction, but the failure of his health care initiative, overseen by Mrs. Clinton, is quickly glossed over, as is the subsequent focus of his administration on such small-bore initiatives as school uniforms and teenage smoking.
Mr. Clinton takes more responsibility in these pages for his affair with Ms. Lewinsky, his lies about that affair and the damage those actions inflicted on his family and his presidency than he has in the past. But he still spends a lot of time — like his wife did in her book — assailing right-wing enemies for his woes over Whitewater, the Paula Jones case and impeachment. In the end, he says, what brought him and his wife back together was weekly counseling sessions and their shared determination "to fight off the right-wing coup." He sheds little new light on his relationship with Mrs. Clinton, simply noting that he always admired her mix of idealism and practicality, and that she initially hesitated over his marriage proposal, knowing that "being married to me would be a high-wire operation in more ways than one." In another passage, Mr. Clinton tries to characterize his impeachment fight as "my last great showdown with the forces I had opposed all of my life" - with those who had defended segregation in the South, opposed the women's and gay rights movements, and who believed government should be run for the benefit of special interests. He adds that he was glad that he had had "the good fortune to stand against this latest incarnation of the forces of reaction and division."
In comparison to these self-serving, often turgid attempts to defend his reputation, Mr. Clinton's account of his youth in Arkansas possesses a pleasing emotional directness. His portraits of life in the raffish Hot Springs and the more sedate Hope (towns that would became the polestars of his Janus-faced personality, what political guru Dick Morris once called "Saturday Night Bill" and "Sunday Morning Clinton") may lack the raw energy of his mother Virginia Kelley's reminiscences, set down in her 1994 book "Leading With My Heart," but he does provide the reader with some telling snapshots of his awkward childhood: a fat, self-conscious boy dressed in a new Easter outfit every year — including, one year, pink and black Hush Puppies and a matching pink suede belt; breaking his leg trying to jump rope wearing cowboy boots; devouring books about Geronimo and Crazy Horse at the local library.
Looking back on those days of living with a violent, abusive stepfather, Mr. Clinton writes like someone familiar with therapeutic tropes. He writes that seeing his stepfather angry and drunk, he came to associate anger with being out of control, and determined to keep his own anger locked away. He writes about experiencing a "major spiritual crisis" at the age of 13, when he found it difficult to sustain a belief in God in the face of his family's difficulties. And he writes about the coping mechanisms he developed — including learning to live "parallel lives" where he walled off his anger and grief to get on with his daily life.
Many events recounted in this book have been chronicled before —- not just by the dozens of reporters and biographers who have swarmed over Mr. Clinton's life, but by people close to the former president, including his wife, his mother, his brother Roger, Ms. Lewinsky, and former members of his administration like George Stephanopoulos and Robert Reich. For the most part, the self-portrait that emerges from this book is not all that different a Bill Clinton from the one the public has already come to know: tireless, driven, boyish, self-absorbed and optimistic, someone riven by contradictions but adept at compartmentalizing different parts of his life.
Mr. Clinton once remarked that he saw character as "a journey, not a destination," and at the end of this book, he cites "becoming a good person" as one of his life goals. Still, the seeds of his adult self can be glimpsed in an autobiographical essay he wrote in high school: "I am a living paradox — deeply religious, yet not as convinced of my exact beliefs as I ought to be; wanting responsibility yet shirking it; loving the truth but often times giving way to falsity." It is only because Mr. Clinton was president of the United States that these excavations of self — a staple of celebrity and noncelebrity memoirs these days — are considered newsworthy.
The nation's first baby-boomer president always seemed like an avatar of his generation, defined by the struggles of the 60's and Vietnam, comfortable in the use of touchy-feely language, and intent on demystifying his job. And yet the former president's account of his life, read in this post-9/11 day, feels strangely like an artifact from a distant, more innocent era.
Lies about sex and real estate, partisan rancor over "character issues" (not over weapons of mass destruction or pre-emptive war), psychobabble mea culpas, and tabloid wrangles over stained dresses all seem like pressing matters from another galaxy, far, far away.
Oh, I hated that video, too! I was just in the OEB the other day and all I could think about was him riding that damn bike down that hall!
While never having a job, at that!
I don't suppose we'll find the answers to that in this book, do you?
lol.. Not likely..
PRESIDENT CLINTON has presented his survival of impeachment as a personal triumph in which the American people stood at his side in a patriotic fight against enemies of the Constitution.
President Clinton: believes historians of the future will salute his defence of the Constitution Evoking an almost heroic view of his ordeal at the hands of the Republican-controlled Congress, Bill Clinton said historians of the future would salute his defence of the Constitution. His words seemed part of an effort to shape his own political legacy. This process includes reaching out to a population which has always warmed to his personal touch, not least by his first question and answer session on an internet site.
Mr Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in December for lying to a grand jury when he denied having a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But Republicans in the Senate could not raise the two-thirds majority to remove him.
In an interview with ABC television, Mr Clinton said: "I think that history will view this much differently. They will say I made a bad personal mistake, I paid a serious price for it, but that I was right to stand and fight for my country and my constitution and its principles, and that the American people were very good to stand with me." He put the Lewinsky scandal in the context of other investigations into his conduct, like the Whitewater development deal in Arkansas.
He said: "I made a personal mistake and they spent $50 million trying to ferret it out because they had nothing else to do, because all the other charges were totally false, bogus, made up, and people were persecuted because they wouldn't commit perjury against me. I think that over the long run, the fact that we accomplished as much as we did in the face of the most severe, bitter partisan onslaught . . . will, in a way, make many of the things we achieve seem all the more impressive."
When he appeared on the Web via George Washington University, Mr Clinton likened his internet debut to the "fireside chats" that Franklin Roosevelt held with the American people on the radio, or John F Kennedy's first televised press conferences. Asked by "Mark of England" if he wished he could serve a third term, something prohibited in the constitution, he said: "I love this job and I would continue to do it if I could."
With an online audience of 50,000, he told another questioner that he thought his legacy would be "a time of transformation, hope, of genuine opportunity, a time when we deepened the bonds of freedom".
LOL!
I refuse to believe it. I wish some of the Arkansas people would let us know about this again. I think they verified my opinion on this.
I hope George Bush is dictating notes as he goes along, and that he has a HUGE autobiography coming out the day he leaves office.
I just knew this Clinton book would be a steaming pile of you-know-what, didn't you?
His WHAT?
He OPPOSED welfare reform, and only voted for it because the Republicans had enough votes to override a veto
He was only able to reduce the deficit by cutting federal government jobs - Which would be great, except for the fact that the jobs he cut were mostly active duty and reserve military positions - Which has come back to bite us in the rump now.
This book is the biggest piece of revisionist bullsh*t to ever hit the non-fiction list.
I noted that reference on another thread where this review was posted as a reply.
I happen to recall Clinton took part in a Santeria ritual (supposedly) before the 1996 election. It was in World Net Daily, but still, could it be a Freudian slip---Bill harking to the practice?
A psychiatrist's dream. And the "recording angel of history" will conclude "psychopath".
'96 election should read '92
Well, I hope the "recording angel" is the "angel that rides the whirlwind and directs the storm."
Crap. Crap is the word you're looking for, but are too fine a person to say it out loud.
Let me.......LOL.
And yes, I knew it would be a self-serving piece of crap!
I'll bet it is!
I just quicky re-read that article about voodoo and according to it, Clinton did rituals before both elections--in '92 and then in March '95.
This from my own deduction from a USA Today article describing Clinton's writing process which entailed many meetings with Todd Widmer, former speechwriter. The article said Clinton used Widmer as a "sounding board".
Uh, right.
Dick Morris (unsavory, perhaps, but truthful in his own way) has stated that Clinton would have others write his speeches, then copy them down longhand--embellishing, of course--so he could say "I wrote it myself". This USA Today article mentioning Widmer did say Clinton was writing it all down longhand on legal pads.
BTW, it also mentioned 85--count 'em, 85--audio tapes he made while in office that he was using for reference for the book.
Takes one to know one.
I say again, if someone told me he sacrificed puppies and kittens in the White House basement, I would tend to believe it.
In many ways, the book is a mirror of Mr. Clinton's presidency: a lot of huffing and puffing followed by a stain on a dress or a little squirt in a sink
Whoever had the thankless job of shaping that mountain of blathering into a book deserves hardship pay.
The gall. I will not post what I am thinking.
!
See my post #94. You are correct.
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