By Taylor Branch
Simon & Schuster, New York, 2009, illustrated, 707 pages, ISBN 1416543333, 9781416543336
This book held my fascination more than Clinton's own memoirs, which were also fascinating but less personal. I liked Taylor Branch less and less as he revealed himself to be a persistent hanger-on more than a man of any real intellectual purpose or means. It was interesting to see how he began to encroach on his subject by, first, making suggestions about what to discuss, second, telling the President what to do, third, making moral judgements about the President, fourth actually moving into the Queen's Bedroom and complaining that there were insufficient pillows. At the end of the book Branch is freely wandering into the Presidential private quarters and nosing around while Bill Clinton is distracted by a phone call.
Despite Branch’s increasing assumption of intimacy and entitlement, the pithy observations of President Clinton, as well his verbatim observations about the world, its people and what he needed to do, made me swoon with unadulterated adoration. Some percipient, if simple, political statements emerge. One is that the President needs to remain consistently and personally involved in policy and administration and should not delegate much of the business to advisors (or, as we saw lately, to the Vice President), or he loses much of the integrity of his administration (remind you of anyone?). Clinton also observes that the Republicans are much better at gaining and retaining power because they are not distracted (or divided) by having any other agenda.
Clinton was always criticised for being indifferent to morals or principles, but the book shows that he separated "raw politics" from what he felt he needed to achieve as President. What upset him about the Whitewater investigations was not that they occurred but that he missed the cue that they would form a dangerous weapon of "raw politics." He seems to have regretted this more keenly than he minded his own self-betrayal in ignoring his wife’s expert legal advice not to allow the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Clinton’s relationships with members of his administration emerge as objective and, at times, merciless. His justifiable antipathy towards his unfortunate Attorney - General, who was hog-tied to the FBI, are well known. But his personal disaffection for Madeleine Albright was interesting to discover as was his appropriate ruthlessness in terminating the appointments of members of the administration whose personal behaviour became a liability.
The President’s perspicacity in analysing the personalities with which he engaged is especially interesting. The relationship I enjoyed reading about the most was that between Clinton and Assad of Syria, the notorious old tyrant/terrorist with whom Clinton developed a genuinely close personal rapport. This had significant consequences for Middle East peace efforts but ultimately failed to make a difference because Netanyahu ignored Assad’s phone calls at a critical moment and thus caused irreversible offense. The stories of Boris Yeltsin are simply astounding. Late at night at the Kremlin, Hillary Clinton tells Boris a thing or two about democracy and scolds him for not being close enough to the Duma; in Washington, on a state visit no less, Boris is picked up by the police in Pennsylvania Avenue where he is wandering around in his underwear, totally drunk and demanding a pizza.
"Well," said Clinton with a shrug, "he got his pizza."
Taylor Branch is not a gifted writer and sometimes gets so caught up in his own words that they remain meaningless or unintelligible. But, on the other hand, he has the whimsy and courage to include some telling informal portraits of characters other than Clinton. His account of the second inauguration provides the unforgettable image of Rev. Jesse Jackson positioning himself contrary to all explicit instructions at the top of the steps of the reviewing stand, creating a bottleneck in the form of a "one man receiving line" to greet on his glorious lonesome the President, Speaker, cabinet and judiciary as they were forced past him on the way out.
Watch an interview with Taylor Branch about "The Clinton Tapes" :
Simon & Schuster, New York, 2009, illustrated, 707 pages, ISBN 1416543333, 9781416543336
Despite Branch’s increasing assumption of intimacy and entitlement, the pithy observations of President Clinton, as well his verbatim observations about the world, its people and what he needed to do, made me swoon with unadulterated adoration. Some percipient, if simple, political statements emerge. One is that the President needs to remain consistently and personally involved in policy and administration and should not delegate much of the business to advisors (or, as we saw lately, to the Vice President), or he loses much of the integrity of his administration (remind you of anyone?). Clinton also observes that the Republicans are much better at gaining and retaining power because they are not distracted (or divided) by having any other agenda.
Clinton was always criticised for being indifferent to morals or principles, but the book shows that he separated "raw politics" from what he felt he needed to achieve as President. What upset him about the Whitewater investigations was not that they occurred but that he missed the cue that they would form a dangerous weapon of "raw politics." He seems to have regretted this more keenly than he minded his own self-betrayal in ignoring his wife’s expert legal advice not to allow the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Clinton’s relationships with members of his administration emerge as objective and, at times, merciless. His justifiable antipathy towards his unfortunate Attorney - General, who was hog-tied to the FBI, are well known. But his personal disaffection for Madeleine Albright was interesting to discover as was his appropriate ruthlessness in terminating the appointments of members of the administration whose personal behaviour became a liability.
The President’s perspicacity in analysing the personalities with which he engaged is especially interesting. The relationship I enjoyed reading about the most was that between Clinton and Assad of Syria, the notorious old tyrant/terrorist with whom Clinton developed a genuinely close personal rapport. This had significant consequences for Middle East peace efforts but ultimately failed to make a difference because Netanyahu ignored Assad’s phone calls at a critical moment and thus caused irreversible offense. The stories of Boris Yeltsin are simply astounding. Late at night at the Kremlin, Hillary Clinton tells Boris a thing or two about democracy and scolds him for not being close enough to the Duma; in Washington, on a state visit no less, Boris is picked up by the police in Pennsylvania Avenue where he is wandering around in his underwear, totally drunk and demanding a pizza.
"Well," said Clinton with a shrug, "he got his pizza."
Taylor Branch is not a gifted writer and sometimes gets so caught up in his own words that they remain meaningless or unintelligible. But, on the other hand, he has the whimsy and courage to include some telling informal portraits of characters other than Clinton. His account of the second inauguration provides the unforgettable image of Rev. Jesse Jackson positioning himself contrary to all explicit instructions at the top of the steps of the reviewing stand, creating a bottleneck in the form of a "one man receiving line" to greet on his glorious lonesome the President, Speaker, cabinet and judiciary as they were forced past him on the way out.
Watch an interview with Taylor Branch about "The Clinton Tapes" :
No comments:
Post a Comment