Bill Clinton’s ‘My Life’: Much too much of a not-so-good thing
(AP) – In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton flew home from New Hampshire to affirm the execution of a cop killer, Rickey Ray Rector. Rector was brain-damaged; when he took his last walk, he left a slice of pecan pie in his cell, intending to eat it when he returned.
Many have wondered whether the Arkansas governor was influenced by politics. His campaign was struggling with reports that he had had an affair with a blond entertainer, Gennifer Flowers, and the execution embellished his tough-on-crime reputation. But Rickey Ray Rector is not mentioned in Bill Clinton’s autobiography, My Life.
Instead, we read about people like Mauria Jackson, with whom he attended his senior class party in high school: “Since Mauria and I were both unattached at the time and had been in grade school together at St. John’s, it seemed like a good idea, and it was.”
That’s it. Nothing more about Mauria Jackson, except that she showed up in New Hampshire to campaign for him in 1992, along with hordes of other Friends of Bill.
Jackson is not the only person who makes a cameo appearance in My Life. There are multitudes of them, each of them no doubt treasured by the former president but many of them completely irrelevant to the rest of us.
None of them comes alive, not even the main characters of this badly conceived, flatly written, poorly edited book. Not Hillary Rodham Clinton, who comes off as a cardboard saint who is said to be smart and tough and good. Not special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, the book’s villain, who comes off as pure evil – not really a human being at all, more of an incubus.
And not even Bill Clinton himself. Here is one of the most fascinating figures of his time, a charismatic and brilliant man – a fatherless boy who rose from humble beginnings to live, in his own words, “an improbable life”, and he has produced a book that lacks anything more than the most rudimentary insights. This master politician does not even offer a single good discussion of the art of politics.
Part of the problem is that My Life is relentlessly chronological, especially the second half of the book, which is devoted to his presidency. Almost every paragraph describes another meeting with a foreign leader or the signing of another bill or delivery of another speech.
The effect is mind-numbing. It’s like being locked in a small room with a very gregarious man who insists on reading his entire appointment book, day by day, beginning in 1946.
There is one exception to the chronology: Clinton tells about his indiscretions with Flowers and Monica Lewinsky only when he is caught and exposed, not when they happened. The consequences, not the dalliances, are part of My Life.
He doesn’t say a lot about either woman. He concentrates on his remorse and the effects on his marriage and career. He suggests that he is a damaged man, prone to secret, shameful, parallel lives because of his upbringing as the stepson of an alcoholic. But his explanations seem too pat, and finally too brief. And then the chronology continues.
There are some interesting passages, such as Clinton’s accounts of his first, unsuccessful campaign (for Congress) and his later races for governor. He brings passion to his brief on the Whitewater investment scandal, and his description of his unsuccessful efforts to end the violence in the Middle East in his last months as president.
But to find the interesting stuff, you have to dig through so much that is not.
Like much of the first half of the book, which alternates the story of Clinton’s life (and his encounters with such people as Mauria Jackson) with primers on the history of the 1960s and tidy lessons that would serve him well when he became president.
Like an explanation of why he allowed junior staffers to eat in the White House mess (it’s good for morale).
Like occasional, detailed rundowns of University of Arkansas football or basketball games.
And like all those unhelpful descriptions of those multitudes he has encountered. On Prince Charles and Diana: “I liked them both and wished that life had dealt them a different hand.”
You dig and you dig. And in the end, it just isn’t worth it.
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