![]() ![]() Bill Clinton surrounded by adoring voters, by adoring Colombian schoolchildren, by adoring Ghanaians.Īt the conclusion of My Life, Clinton waxes magniloquent: “I wrote this book to tell my story and to tell the story of America in the last half of the 20th century to describe as fairly as I could the forces competing for the country’s heart and mind to explain the challenges of the new world in which we live.” Etc., etc., etc. Bill Clinton with his Secret Service detail. The photo sections of the book resemble some hyperactive teenager’s camp bulletin: Bill Clinton with the White House valets. Once a week they served Mexican dishes I especially liked.Īnd so forth. I ordered lunch from it almost every day and enjoyed going down to visit with the young people who worked in the kitchen. The mess was a wood-paneled room with good food prepared by Navy personnel. Afterward, anyone who wanted to stay returned to the foyer of the White House for dancing. For the entertainment, we usually had room to invite more guests than could be accommodated at the dinner. Over the years, we had Earth, Wind, and Fire, Yo-Yo Ma, Placido Domingo, Jessye Norman, and many other classical, jazz, blues, Broadway, and gospel musicians. I took every opportunity I could to bring all kinds of musicians to the White House. He came to Washington to have a good time-and what a time it was, and how he enjoyed it: In one way, though, Clinton did achieve an unequivocal success as President. He can make peace, and you can keep control of New Haven.” ![]() “Why do you care who wins the nomination? Endorse McGovern. I replied that I didn’t have much money, but I did have 800 volunteers who would knock on the doors of every house in his stronghold, telling all the Italian mothers that Arthur Barbieri wanted to keep sending their sons to fight and die in Vietnam. He said he had dedicated $50,000 to the effort, a huge sum in those days for a town the size of New Haven. He smiled and told me that 1972 would not be a replay of 1968, that he had already lined up his poll workers and a number of his cars to take his people to the polls. He sat back in his chair with his hands folded across his chest, displaying two huge diamond rings, one big circular one with lots of stones, the other with his initials, AB, completely filled with diamonds. When I walked into his office and introduced myself, Barbieri was cordial but businesslike. ![]() Here is his account of how he persuaded one Arthur Barbieri, the Democratic boss of New Haven, Connecticut, to endorse George McGovern over the other Democratic contenders in the 1972 primary campaign: When he wishes, Clinton can be both frank and lucid in his use of language, and his stories often ring with more truth than presidential autobiographers are accustomed to permit themselves. Yet on this front as well, My Life can surprise you, often agreeably. It wasn’t true.” By now, any reader who knows anything about Bill Clinton will know enough to ask what, precisely, “wasn’t true.” Here, for example, is his version of the episode in 1998 when a former White House aide, Kathleen Willey, accused him on national television of having kissed and fondled her: “ claimed I had made an unwanted advance toward her while she was working in the White House. Again and again Clinton reverts to his old habit of using lawyerly language for purposes of concealment. The book suffers, too, from even worse faults than turgidity. ![]()
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