 s
he began his last year in office, Bill Clinton also began a long series
of farewell interviews about his presidency and his plans for life
after the White House. Of course he would write a book and make a
living, Clinton often said, but his true goal was something far more
important: "I'm going to try to maintain a high level of activity
in the areas that I'm particularly interested in. I've spent a lot
of my life working on reconciliation of people across racial, religious,
and other lines. I'm very interested in using the power of technology
. . . to help poor countries and poor areas overcome what would ordinarily
take years in economic development and education. I'm very interested
in continuing my work to try to convince Americans and the rest of
the world that we can beat global warming without shutting down the
economy . . . I'm very interested in promoting the concept of public
service among young people. . . . Those are four things I'll do."
Two years after
he said that, in February 2002, former president Clinton, in Miami
to earn $100,000 for a speech to a pro-Israel group, spent his time,
in the words of the local paper, "partying like a rock star,"
starting at Nobu, the hip South Beach restaurant, and later making
the rounds at the trendy nightclub Rumi. A few days earlier, Clinton
had been at his headquarters in Harlem, where he hosted a Super
Bowl party for a group that included, according to the New York
Post, "[actor] Chris Tucker, Israel's Shimon Peres, nightclub
queen Amy Sacco, and Alec Baldwin." And a few weeks before
that, Clinton was in London, where papers reported that he and his
party of 17 hit Soho's hot Groucho Club, running up a $14,000 tab
before the former president finally returned to his room at the
Ritz around 3 a.m.
While it would
not be fair to suggest that such stories — and many more like
them — represent the sum of Clinton's life during the first
year of his ex-presidency, they do stand in stark contrast to the
seriousness of the goals Clinton set for himself outside the White
House. Whatever their attractions, Rumi and Groucho are unlikely
settings for the work of resolving religious and ethnic conflicts,
empowering the world's poor, solving global warming, and promoting
national service. Clinton aimed to create an ex-presidency that
rose to the highest levels of statesmanship. What he has done, after
a year of hanging out in fashionable watering holes in New York,
Los Angeles, and Europe, is create a pattern for an ex-presidency
that will likely be as undisciplined and ultimately unsuccessful
as his years in the White House.
A
Bon Vivant, Not A Memoirist
Clinton
had the worst beginning of an ex-presidency since Richard Nixon
flew to San Clemente in 1974. First there was the pardon scandal
— still the subject of a criminal investigation — and,
at the same time, the controversy over the gifts both Clintons took
when they left the White House. By the time those died down, September
11 arrived to shed a merciless light on Clinton's failure to address
the threat of international terrorism that grew exponentially during
his time in office. Added to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the campaign-finance
scandal, and a host of lesser misdeeds while in office, these new
developments left Clinton with an enormous task of self-rehabilitation
if he were ever to achieve his lofty goals.
Perhaps the
best first step an ex-president with a major image problem can take
is to write a serious book. "Part of what Nixon did was invest
very heavily in the writing of his memoirs, which was in fact 60
or 70 percent a Watergate memoir," says Princeton historian
Fred Greenstein. "He used his strengths: his tenacity and his
intelligence." Nixon's memoirs, confounding the low expectations
normally given to presidential recollections, were actually quite
well received and were a critical step in his rehabilitation.
Clinton has
a similar opportunity, but there is evidence that he is throwing
it away. Last August, he signed a book contract for more than $10
million — the exact figure was never made public — with
the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. It was the largest amount ever paid
for a nonfiction book. Reports at the time stressed that Clinton
planned to write the book himself, under the supervision of Robert
Gottlieb, the former New Yorker editor and Knopf man who
has become legendary in publishing circles for working on a number
of bestsellers. Publication was set for fall 2003.
Now it appears
there is real concern in Clinton circles about whether that deadline
will be met. Sources say Clinton has not only not written anything
but has also not organized his thoughts in the fashion necessary
to produce a serious book. While he has asked Ted Widmer, a Harvard-educated
historian who served as a speechwriter on Clinton's national-security
staff, to assist him, at this point Clinton finds himself in the
position of being ill prepared to turn in the multimillion-dollar
project he has promised to produce within a year. It's a situation
that doesn't surprise some who worked with Clinton through the years.
"Lacking something [major] to do, he falls victim to entropy,
which was always his biggest problem," says former political
adviser Dick Morris. "Unless he had a goal [bigger than writing
a book], he could never organize himself — and then entropy
took over and he became sullen and disorganized and confused."
In the end, Clinton may have to resort to bringing in a last-minute
book doctor to assemble a book from interviews with the former president.
Whoever writes
it, the Clinton book, if it is to do him the sort of good that Nixon's
memoirs did, would have to deal seriously with the scandals that
defined large parts of his presidency, particularly the independent-counsel
investigation that led to his impeachment. But sources who keep
tabs on the work say no one should expect real candor. "He's
going to paper over the whole thing," says one. "If he
had put energy behind it instead of screwing around for this last
year, it would have helped the reputation of his administration."
Of course,
it's at least theoretically possible that Clinton might be secretly
planning to offer up a revealing and measured account of his presidency.
But at the moment there is no reason to think so. A good preview
of his approach can be found on the website
of Clinton's presidential library, which contains a timeline of
Clinton's two terms. For 1998 — the Year of Lewinsky —
the timeline says, in full: "For the first time since 1969,
the federal government has a budget surplus. The President supports
using the surplus to 'Save Social Security first.' President Clinton
plays a major roll [sic] in the Good Friday Peace Accords between
Catholic and Protestant leaders in Northern Ireland and in the Wye
River Memorandum between Benjamin Netanyahu and Yassir Arafat."
Neither does the overview of 1999 take notice of Clinton's impeachment
trial in the Senate. The website does, however, invite readers to
"learn more about how Bill Clinton worked and continues to
work for the betterment of America."
Beyond going
to parties and not writing his memoirs, Clinton's principal activity
in his post-presidential year has been giving speeches. Since September
11, one of Clinton's stock presentations has been the "struggle
for the soul of the 21st century" speech, a rambling, 6,000-word
meditation on the origins of terrorism and Clinton's efforts to
fight it. Clinton has delivered the speech at major universities
across the country-at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown-as well as to
trade groups and at fundraisers.
For all its
length and scope, the one thing the speech does not do is give a
comprehensive account of the Clinton administration's response to
international terrorism. One finds only brief and insubstantial
references to the first World Trade Center bombing and the attacks
on U.S. embassies in Africa; there is no mention at all of the bombings
of the Khobar Towers military barracks or the USS Cole. Instead,
the speech has moments of cringe-making self-centeredness, as when
Clinton says of the victims of September 11, "The people who
perished represent not only the best of America, but the best of
the world I worked hard for eight years to build." It has moments
of classically Clintonian self-promotion, as when he says, "In
the years that I served as president, we worked very hard to improve
our defenses and to bring terrorists to justice in the hope a day
like September 11th would never come." And it has moments of
late-night, dorm-room philosophizing, as when Clinton says, "This
is a big fight for the soul of the 21st century about three things:
What is the nature of truth? What is the value of life? What is
the content of community?" Some of it sounds appealing-particularly
the upbeat, we-can-lick-this-thing-if-we-all-work-together conclusion-but
it ultimately never really says how to do anything.
The
Coolidge Fate
"Here's
what's unique about Bill Clinton," says Richard Norton Smith,
the historian and author who has served as director of the Reagan,
Ford, Eisenhower, and Hoover presidential libraries. "He had
the luxury during his presidency of being the first president in
American history who was assessed not by one poll but by two polls."
Smith is referring to the Lewinsky-era polling practice of asking
Americans to rate Clinton's job performance separately from their
approval or disapproval of him as a human being. "But since
[George W. Bush's] inauguration day, that luxury has disappeared.
Clinton is no longer doing the job as president, and with the passage
of time, memories of the job performance, however high, tend to
be subsumed in the rush of successive events."
Smith continues:
"He should talk to Calvin Coolidge, who, in his last address,
rather complacently took credit for the overwhelming prosperity
associated with his name. A few months later, literally overnight,
he came to be seen in a radically different light, and fairly or
unfairly, 70 years later, he's never quite escaped from the shadow
of the Crash." Smith pauses for a moment. "September 11,
it can be argued, is Bill Clinton's Black Tuesday."
The terrorist
attacks made Clinton's ex-presidency vastly more difficult. When
he discusses his administration's actions on terrorism, he appears
to be defending the indefensible. And when he discusses the rest
of his administration's record, including its actual accomplishments,
it all seems small in light of September 11. There's nothing he
can do about that; he has no more chances to be president.
But Clinton
could improve the public's perception of him by long, hard, focused
work in some useful role. Jimmy Carter left office a failed president,
and whether one approves of his post-White House career or not,
it is indisputable that Carter raised himself in the public's esteem
by working very hard at his new role-sometimes under unpleasant
conditions and sometimes without the presence of admiring celebrities.
So far Clinton has shown no inclination to do that kind of work,
although he is said to want the kind of admiration that Carter enjoys.
But one is not possible without the other. "You can't have
it both ways," says Douglas Brinkley, the Carter biographer
and sometime Clinton supporter. "You can't want to be considered
a great ex-president like Jimmy Carter and not do the grunt work.
You can't want to be wining and dining around Manhattan and do that
work."
When asked
for a list of his accomplishments as an ex-president, Clinton's
office declines comment, saying only that he is a private citizen
and his activities are private matters. Later, after the deadline
has passed for this article's appearance in National Review magazine,
a spokeswoman sends a list of the activities the former president
considers most important. Clinton, the office says, is working with
local leaders in Harlem to "design a set of economic development
projects focused on the needs of small businesses." He has
also created the Clinton Democracy Fellowship Program, a sort of
AmeriCorps volunteer program for young people in South Africa, and
serves on the board of foundations that work for AIDS treatment
and prevention, Indian earthquake relief, and the families of September
11 victims — all, according to Clinton's representatives, "in
an effort to continue to act on his belief in global interdependence
and common humanity."
But the accomplishment
the former president's office lists first is a forum held recently
by the William J. Clinton Foundation entitled "Islam and America
in a Global World." Clinton's remarks at the forum were similar
to those in the "struggle for the soul of the 21st century"
speech, except that he now seems to be placing greater emphasis
on the idea that cultural exchanges are more important than military
action in the war on terrorism. "I believe all of us will have
to make a very concerted effort to develop a way of dealing with
each other which respects both our interesting differences and our
common humanity," Clinton said. "It still seems there
are many, many Muslims throughout the world including in the United
States, who see most of what we are and do as a threat to their
values, their economic interests, their political aspirations. Working
through these matters is critical to building a world rooted in
partnership not paralyzed by terror and fear."
So the talk
goes on. This week, Clinton is in Australia for one of his biggest
paydays yet-reportedly $300,000 for a single speech, along with
a concert and numerous dinners in his honor. The hard, unglamorous
work of resolving religious and ethnic conflicts, empowering the
world's poor, solving global warming, and promoting national service
will have to wait, at least for a while.
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