This biography is one of those fabulous essay-length books of about 150 pages. I read it because there was so much I missed in the nineties, while working rather hard, and because I thought it might help me better understand our current political divisions, which seem to stem from that era*. Clearly, a new-age draft avoider with a propensity to chase skirts riled the hard right. The right's standard bearer was the loathsome hypocrite Speaker Newt Gingrich. They clashed throughout Clinton's term with the President winning round one: the conflict over the 1994 government shutdown. Although the 1996 Republican reform of welfare was anathema to Clinton's advisers, his signature propelled him to an easy victory over Bob Dole. Clinton's second term appeared to be on track for greatness as the economy was totally booming and the deficit, Republican topic number one for decades, was headed toward elimination. Then, in early 1998 with Kenneth Starr breathing down his neck after four years of fishing, the President advised Monica Lewinsky to lie in an affidavit about their relationship and the result was the second impeachment trial of an American president. The effort failed in February, 1999. In his last two years in office, Clinton attempted to broker peace in the Middle East and ultimately, added his name to the long list of those who have failed in that effort. He successfully added vast amounts of land and ocean to federally protected status.
The author, who is described as someone whose work leans left, states that historians have been generally favorable to Clinton's years in office. He cites the economy and the deficit elimination, and I suspect that over the long course, Bill Clinton will be highly regarded because of those numbers and his do-no-harm foreign policy. The author chides him for remaining in the public eye and for the sometimes questionable activities of his Foundation. As for me, I did not find any particular insight into the political clashes, and also note that there was only an incomplete mentioning of the eastward expansion of NATO, which some characterize as a very serious mistake and one which the Clinton administration undertook without much thought or assessment.
*In 2016's best-seller,'White Trash', the author suggests that one of the reasons Clinton was attacked so venomously by the right was that he was white trash and far from the traditional establishment. Somehow, Georgetown, Oxford and Yale sound pretty establishment to me. Gingrich's background as the only child of an apparent teenage shotgun marriage, and then, growing up on army bases, is equally trashy, and he led the charge.
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