I’ve been listening to Bill Clinton’s autobiography in an abridged book-on-tape version, read by the author. He talks about his daughter’s pet frog. He talks about his family and their struggles with obesity and alcohol and cocaine addiction. He talks about stopping at McDonald’s for coffee towards the end of his morning jog back in Arkansas. The book demonstrates how far politicians have come since the days of Nixon (no one dares hope that anyone in our current crop will measure up to an old thinker/writer/doer such as Jefferson). Nixon was the man who struggled with big issues that were important to all Americans. You’d expect to find Nixon writing about how he started up the Environmental Protection Agency, got us out of Vietnam, and opened up trade with Red China. Clinton, on the other hand, seems totally unreflective. He talks about how people cheered when he got Itzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat to sign some sort of agreement in the backyard of the White House but not about why, if this was such an important accomplishment, 12 years later the war between Arabs and Jews continues unabated. He mentions the dates on which he decided to start bombing people in former Yugoslavia but does not take advantage of the distance of a decade to look at the long-term result (as far as I’ve heard, both the Christians whom we bombed and the Muslims on whose behalf we were bombing hate us now).
Clinton rails against the “conservative media” who misrepresented his proposals, much as our current rulers rail against the “liberal media”. He expresses genuine confusion that the U.S. contained so many angry little people who harassed him by alleging scandals or imagined that they understood his motivations or marriage. Speaking of “little people”, Clinton never seems to have harbored any doubt, even as a young man, that he was entitled to their vote. He believed right from the start that he was the best-qualified person for whatever job he was seeking. Perhaps this is why we’ve had so many presidents from small towns in obscure states and surprisingly few from big cities. If you grow up as the only smart person in a tiny school you might subconsciously believe for the rest of your life that you ought to be elected governor, president, whatever. If, on the other hand, you grow up in Manhattan you might remember “hey, there were a bunch of folks in my old neighborhood who knew a lot more than I did and would probably do a better job.” This might tend to sap your confidence.
If you want to learn about government, foreign policy, management, etc. the book is useless. If, on the other hand, you’re exasperated at the mediocrity of our current President, this book is a nice reminder that George W. has no monopoly on mediocrity.
[You might ask why I continue to listen. I'm driving N to Nashua, New Hampshire every morning for helicopter lessons and then SW to Concord, Massachusetts for English riding lessons in the afternoon and therefore am spending several hours every day in the car.]
