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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
He loved him, he hated him. Now Bill Clinton's foremost chronicler concludes that Clinton's presidency rose above the political -- and personal -- demons that beset it and will be remembered for its historic accomplishments.
Apr 8, 2002 | Two years before President Clinton's 1998 summer of shame, when he was forced to admit to his family, the nation, impeachment-crazed Republicans and the media the details of his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky -- a relationship he had denied for months -- Clinton chronicler Joe Klein had his own 15 minutes of shame. After months of insisting he hadn't written "Primary Colors," the bestselling, barely fictionalized account of President Clinton's, er, Gov. Jack Stanton's scandal-plagued pursuit of the White House (and women), Klein was outed by the Washington Post as "Anonymous," and forced to come clean.
Journalists and politicians howled. After all, the sharp-tongued Newsweek columnist had denied being "Anonymous" with increasing stridency. "For God's sake," he declared during the New Hampshire primary, "definitely, I didn't write it." He bitterly attacked the journalists who tried to expose him. (But it was hard not to think envy and schadenfreude motivated some of the journalistic piling on; "Primary Colors" was a surprisingly good novel, and also made Klein a pile of money.) Former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers was brutal. "In the end he traded his journalistic credibility for 30 pieces of silver," she told reporters. Time columnist Margaret Carlson seemed to enjoy the many ironies of Klein's plight. "The political columnist who specializes in exposing the self-indulgent moral relativism of fellow baby boomers badly lost his way," she wrote in July 1996. Klein, she noted, had attacked the Clintons' "lawyering, fudging, misdirection, obfuscation and generally slouchy behavior" whenever they faced tough questions. "The intensity of their denials is fascinating ..." he had written once. "They defend their virtue against all reason; they never inhale."
The parallels with Clinton's ultimate self-humiliation still two years away would turn out to be even more fascinating. But the links between the two men already were remarkable. Klein gave his heart to Clinton early, seeing in him a New Democrat whose political odyssey matched his own. Both were Democrats who'd become disillusioned with big government, and with the pieties of liberalism on questions of race, welfare, education and economic development. Klein was the Arkansas governor's biggest media booster during the 1992 presidential race. But he fell out of love fairly quickly, because of Clinton's lack of discipline in developing an agenda in his chaotic early White House years, because he entrusted healthcare reform to his more liberal wife, whose proposal turned out to be a big-government debacle, and finally, it seemed, because he couldn't stay clear of sexual scandal. As the Paula Jones story gained journalistic steam in 1994, a disgusted Klein wrote a memorable Newsweek column, "The Politics of Promiscuity," which was widely quoted because it gave a justification for delving into the president's seamy personal life: Clinton's lack of personal discipline slid over into his sloppy policymaking, Klein argued, and the nation was suffering as a result.
Klein's most devastating portrait of Clinton's politics of promiscuity, of course, came in "Primary Colors." And yet while many read it as an attack on the president, it was in some ways a sort of love letter. I still think my own emotional appreciation for our needy, brilliant, hugely flawed president came from the lovingly wrought portrait of Jack Stanton that was so real, you had to remind yourself that it was fiction. The president, however, didn't read it as a love letter. Thanks to Klein's relentlessly critical Newsweek columns, the two men's relations already were strained. "Primary Colors" seemed as if it would sever their bond permanently.
Who knows if Klein's own moment in the media star chamber made him more sympathetic to the president he'd savaged. Whatever the reason, Klein came to appreciate the sadder, wiser Clinton who emerged from the 1994 Republican rout of Congress. The triangulation and incrementalism hated by liberals impressed Klein as a slow, strategic stock-taking, a way to smoke out House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his clumsy revolutionaries -- and ultimately, unbelievably prevail. Klein would even eventually recant his "politics of promiscuity" argument, finding that after those frustrating first two years, Clinton would go on to have "a serious, disciplined, responsible presidency."
Klein made the case for that judgment in an October 2000 New Yorker profile, in which he sat down with his old pal, the president, for a series of candid conversations on everything from Gingrich to Lewinsky, healthcare to Hillary. He expanded the article into "The Natural," the book released this spring, at a time when Clinton's old enemies were finding new ways to savage his presidency, blaming him for Sept. 11 as well as the Middle East debacle, and the president needed his old defender.
The Clinton presidency was indeed more remarkable than even some defenders give it credit for. In his two terms he erased budget deficits and built up a surplus, and helped create the conditions for one of the longest economic booms in history; he reformed welfare, passed NAFTA, bailed out the Mexican peso and brought some stability to the bloody Balkans. And while liberals and others insist Clinton never pushed through big programs that would leave him with a legacy, Klein disagrees. The college tax credit bill he passed in 1997 was larger than the G.I. Bill of Rights bill, for instance. In fact the Clinton White House presided over an incredible expansion of programs and support for the lower middle class and the working poor: The 1997 budget alone provided $70 billion, over the next five years, to families with incomes under $30,000. And recent Census figures showed that the Clinton boom lifted 4.1 million children out of poverty, while the Reagan-era boom lifted only 50,000 kids.
But "The Natural" is not without criticism. Klein still savages Clinton's self-pity and self-indulgence, which gave "a sword to those who hated what he stood for." The Lewinsky mess, and his lies about it, were one example, the ugly late-night Marc Rich pardon another. His tone, in the end, is elegiac. The larger-than-life Clinton "had the misfortune to serve at a time when greatness wasn't required," and you get the sense Klein feels -- though he insists he won't psychoanalyze Clinton -- that his many scandals and scrapes with political death were a self-created substitute for the real-life tests and challenges his peacetime presidency was denied.
Salon talked to Klein just as Clinton returned to the news, telling Klein's former Newsweek colleague Jonathan Alter that he now regrets the Marc Rich pardon -- but only because of its political fallout. At points in the interview with Alter, Clinton seems to be refuting his old ally Klein, insisting that he doesn't feel he missed the leadership challenge of his generation, the one his successor is presiding over in the Middle East and Afghanistan. He diminishes the current crisis as being "not like World War II at all" -- a defensive Boomer assertion in itself -- and won't admit to regretting that he isn't president to deal with it. "The Natural" makes it hard to believe Clinton about that.
Reading "The Natural," I was reminded that one of the things I liked about "Primary Colors" was the way it made me really appreciate Bill Clinton, this needy, talented, larger-than-life guy. Between the two books, I'd have to say you've captured him better than anyone else. There's also a palpable sense of affection for him in both books, as well as disappointment in his flaws. How do you feel about him personally?
I don't know how I feel about him personally. I know how I feel about him professionally, though. "Primary Colors" is an interesting place to start. What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they're really like.
Well, he obviously provokes you on some level. He gets under your skin and I think you get under his.
