USATODAY: Clinton's Book SUCKS!!
Crazy Bastard
Clinton takes a long, but not always close, look at his life
By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
Shortly after law school, Bill Clinton read a self-help paperback, How to
Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, that advised making lists of life
goals.
My Life is occasionally funny but rarely brief.
Clinton followed the advice. Among his most important goals, he notes in his
memoir, My Life, out today, was to "write a great book."
My Life is not a great book. It's not even a good book, but like its author,
it has its moments and flashes of insight.
It is Clintonesque: frustrating and fascinating, more exhausting than
exhaustive.
Readers seeking an intimate portrait of his marriage to Hillary Rodham
Clinton will be disappointed. So will anyone wondering what he was thinking
during his "encounters" (his word) with Monica Lewinsky.
My Life is more likely to appeal to readers who want to celebrate a
president who rose from modest roots, survived an abusive, alcoholic
stepfather and developed an insatiable intellectual curiosity.
It describes the self-education of a politician whose only ambition, as he
tells it, was to improve the lives of ordinary Americans despite powerful,
conservative interests out to destroy him.
At 957 pages, it's short on personal revelations, but long on every campaign
Clinton waged, from Boys Nation to the White House. Everywhere he goes he
makes friends and learns valuable lessons.
His writing style is a touch of down-home Arkansas polished by Georgetown
and Oxford. He rates the films of Elvis Presley (his favorite: Love Me
Tender) and credits his daughter, Chelsea, for helping him appreciate the
"intelligence and alienation" of rap and hip-hop. He describes a dinner with
his friend novelist Bill Styron and "the superb Mexican writer Carlos
Fuentes and my literary hero Gabriel Garcia Marquez " who didn't believe
that, at 14, Chelsea had read two of his books.
Chelsea gets some of the best lines. Before he spoke at her high school
graduation, Clinton asked what he should say. "Dad, I want you to be wise,
briefly. The girls want you to be wise; the boys just want you to be funny."
My Life is occasionally funny but rarely brief. (Its wisdom depends on your
politics.) Clinton describes growing up among great storytellers, including
his resilient mother and his uncle Buddy who "taught me that everyone has a
story." But does Clinton have to tell them all?
With Lewinsky he avoids details. He labels his behavior "immoral and
foolish."
The closest he comes to an explanation is that as a boy, his family's policy
for dealing with problems was "don't ask, don't tell." He learned to lead
"parallel lives, an external life that takes its natural course and an
internal life where the secrets are hidden. ... It was dark down there."
He repeatedly argues that his impeachment had nothing to do with morality
and everything to do with a right-wing grab for power. As angry as his wife
was with him, he writes, she was angrier at special prosecutor Ken Starr. He
also writes that "in politics, if you don't toot your own horn, it usually
stays untooted."
There's much tooting here, from Clinton's economic success to the warning he
describes giving President-elect Bush about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
Clinton adds, "He listened to what I had to say without much comment, then
changed the subject to how I did my job."
I haven't listened to the abridged 6½-hour audio, read by Clinton, but I
suspect that with skillful editing, it could be better than the overwritten
book.
The unabridged audio, all 51 hours, will be released in July, narrated
mostly by a professional reader. Apparently, it's too much for even Clinton.