An exhaustive, soul-searching memoir, Bill Clinton's My Life is a refreshingly candid look at the former president as a son, brother, teacher, father, husband and public figure. Clinton painstakingly outlines the history behind his greatest successes and failures, including his dedication to educational and economic reform, his war against a "vast right-wing operation" determined to destroy him, and the "morally indefensible" acts for which he was nearly impeached. My Life is autobiography as therapy--a personal history written by a man trying to face and banish his private demons.

Clinton approaches the story of his youth with gusto, sharing tales of giant watermelons, nine-pound tumours, a charging ram, famous mobsters and jazz musicians and a BB gun standoff. He offers an equally energetic portrait of American history, pop culture and the evolving political landscape, covering the historical events that shaped his early years (namely the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr and JFK) and the events that shaped his presidency (Waco, Bosnia, Somalia). What makes My Life remarkable as a political memoir is how thoroughly it is infused with Clinton's unassuming, charmingly pithy voice:

I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts, and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can't be judged only by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgments can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only, response to pain.

However, that same voice might tire readers as Clinton applies his penchant for minute details to a distractible laundry list of events, from his youth through the years of his presidency. Not wanting to forget a single detail that might help account for his actions, Clinton overdoes it--do we really need to know the name of his childhood barber? But when Clinton sticks to the meat of his story--recollections about his mother, his abusive stepfather, Hillary, the campaign trail and Kenneth Starr--the veracity of emotion and revelations about "what it is like to be President" make My Life impossible to put down.

To Clinton, "politics is a contact sport" and while he claims that My Life is not intended to make excuses or assign blame, it does portray him as a fighter whose strategy is to "take the first hit, then counterpunch as hard as I could". While My Life is primarily a stroll through Clinton's memories, it is also a scathing rebuke--a retaliation against his detractors, including Kenneth Starr, whose "mindless search for scandal" protected the guilty while "persecuting the innocent" and distracted his administration from pressing international matters (including strikes on al Qaeda). Counterpunch indeed.

At its core, My Life is a charming and intriguing if flawed book by an intriguing and flawed man who had his worst failures and humiliations made public. Ultimately, the man who left office in the shadow of scandal offers an honest and open account of his life, allowing readers to witness his struggle to "drain the most out of every moment" while maintaining the character with which he was raised. It is a remarkably intimate, persuasive look at the boy he was, the president he became and the man he is today. --Daphne Durham, Amazon.com

2008-09-03 Economical With The Truth?

I was torn, reading this book. On the one hand, there can be little doubt that Clinton was the best-educated U.S. President (and I mean in the true sense educated, not just that he attended Georgetown, Yale and Oxford) for a generation, perhaps of all in fact, BUT BUT BUT he leaves a lot of questions unanswered in these memoirs: the women...well, that is really just his own private or family affair, but also there is left out a lot of how he became President. He was assisted by the fact that Arkansas has the lowest educational-qualificational level in the USA (with Mississippi) and so a young man with Oxford, Yale and Georgetown (and attorney qualification) behind him has a head start. Also, the taxpayers of the state had not raised the Governor's salary for 60 years! That reduced the field too.

I was more interested in how, having become Governor for the second time (after having been chucked out after an unsuccessful first term), he was put "in the frame" to be Democratic nominee for the Presidency. He says, offhand, that he attended the Bilderberger secret (they say "private"...Denis Healey has been a notable participant over the years) conference in Europe in 1991. Hillary mentions it too, in her memoirs, "Living History", by the way. These meetings, set up after WW2, have been said to perform the function of beauty contests by which hidden groupings influence the supposedly "democratic" politics of the "West". It seems that his attendance worked for Bill Clinton, anyway...

Like "Obliterate Iran" Hillary in her memoirs (Living History), Bill presents himself, probably partly truthfully, as a caring sharing good ol' boy, but not only does he engage in the despicable "sport" of shooting tired ducks that fly to Arkansas from Canada for the winter, but he says he "had no qualms" sentencing some people to death, in effect, by refusing to commute their sentences. He says they deserved it. Perhaps so, but his job is, at his discretion, to exercise mercy, not justice. He sentenced others to death more directly when his missiles hit various countries, including Sudan (he says a chemical plant, others say a sweet factory). And he bombed Serbia, killing thousands. Clinton is erudite enough to recognize the quotation from Saint-Just: "No-one can rule guiltlessly"...

He says that the American-Jewish community "did a lot for me". Hm...certainly he had no problem putting on a skullcap and attending a synagogue prior to election as President, as I saw on American TV myself (I lived in the USA at the time of his election in 1992). That seems to be a rite of passage for all those aspiring to the Oval Office now. Without that stamp of approval from Zionism, the candidate has no chance of funding or election.

He does feel the need to explain just why he gave in to Israeli demands to pardon the FBI most wanted fugitive Marc Rich (in exile in Switzerland) in the last days of his Presidency. To my mind, his explanation did not convince.

There is a huge amount relating to the Special Counsel invesigating him and Hillary over Whitewater. To my mind, you have to be a very political American to value that part of the book. As for the domestic policy details, ditto. The truth is that there are anyway so many "checks and balances" in the US system that it is hard for even a 2-term President to really change anything much.

Overall, I enjoyed the first half of this massive tome (good value on Amazon at about one pound, btw!) more than, especially, the last third or so and I am sure that he would make a great conversationalist, but I was left with doubts about just how decent and "nice" he really is, under the surface.