If we can reasonably assume conservative republicanright-wingers see former president Bill Clinton's memoir My Life aslittle more than a spin-filled, aw-shucks, legacy life preserver,those objective few who remain can have an intelligent conversationabout it.
At nearly 1,000 pages, the Clinton tome will be read by some,skimmed by others and purchased by even more to decorate abookshelf.
Most of us, satisfying our voyeurism, will quickly flip tosections discussing the impeachment and the illustrious Ms.Lewinski, hoping to find something not revealed in the millionhours of coverage and speculation that were the last two years ofClinton's second term.
Any presidential administration has secrets, and at the heart ofthose secrets is a man, the truth about whom is wondered andspeculated during his time in office and written about in less thanperfect detail afterward. In My Life, Clinton tries to answerpublic questions and provide insight into perhaps the most talkedabout presidency in decades, save Ronald Reagan's, which wasrecently dissected in sub-atomic detail.
Any presidential memoir must be considered through the prism oflegacy building. No doubt, the democrats crave revenge for theClinton impeachment debacle. Will they seek to travel a similarroad with President Bush in the spotlight? If Bush is re-elected,will rumblings of impeachment over Iraqi war intelligence shake thefoundation of Washington politics? I don't think so, but old RushLimbaugh sure does.
Judge Kenneth Starr, who led the $70 million circus-like Clintoninvestigation, produced little more than presidential infidelities.If the same amount were spent investigating your life, what wouldit reveal? The cast of characters who dominated our televisionscreens during the late 1990s has fallen by the wayside. They'llget the occasional talk show spot. But what's left behind thedifficult final years of the Clinton presidency is the man himself.We have him and now 900 plus pages of his words to ponder, ridiculeor praise. It's down on paper. What historians do with it is out ofour hands.
If President Reagan's passing and subsequent memorials gave Busha bump in the ratings, perhaps Clinton's memoir and accompanyingbook tour will remind Americans what once inspired them to electhim, and some of that will rub off on Kerry. He needs it. Becauseright now he's still perceived as the rich guy who speaks above theheads of the regular guy and whose wife is a powerfulmultimillionaire. But stranger things have happened.
After all, it wasn't too long ago that a strong woman helpedvault a little-known Arkansas governor into the Oval Office.
