Rating: 
Summary: Balanced, Smart and Knowledgeable
Review: I've seen Joe Klein on TV a few times, and he seems a bit defensive about whether he's "pro" or "anti" Clinton. Klein perhaps is buying into the noxious Washington media habit of reducing all civics into two sides, a "left" or "right." To his credit, he doesn't fall into this trap in this book which was, for me, profoundly useful and insightful in explaining a presidency that was baffling to me. Clinton seems so smart and, at times, far-sighted -- his notions of guiding the U.S., for example, into a post-industrial economy, and yet, the sleazy, amoral side of him is just appalling. One of the many great things about Klein's book is that he explains what made Clinton great at times and awful at times. He skips past the usual media cant and shouting. It's a very readable, compelling book. I am amazed that I could learn this much about Clinton ever seeing all this media coverage of him for years. Yet little of it explained him.
Klein doesn't so much tell us precisely how Clinton got this way as he does lay out how he was. I feel now, finally, as if I understood what Clinton really did well, and also just how disturbed and sad he was/is. It's a terrific and very, very smart piece of journalism. There are thousands of reporters in Washington, but most of them seem to be screaming at one another all of the time. Klein has actually and succinctly (and brilliantly) laid out the truth about the Clinton presidency.
Silly people are always looking for bias on the "left" or "right" but this book is a lot of truth about a complicated, misunderstood and tragically messed up President.
Rating: 
Summary: Knee-jerk context
Review: Yes, another book on the Clinton presidency. Having read several that have gone before, there is little here that stands as remarkably fresh, but Klein's does make an effort to consider the Clinton years with the benefit of hindsight. The problem in that, of course, is that barely a year does not hindsight make. Coming in at just over 200 pages, one cannot hope to view this as a thorough take, but rather a tour through the highlights and the lowlights. Furthermore, Klein's attention was clearly (and understandably) more focused on the first term, making for a lopsided engagement. Klein's clear favoring of the New Democratic ideals adds another layer of bias. And the prism of September 11 makes for some amusingly knee-jerk assessments on Clinton's foreign policies. Mercifully, the reader is spared page after page on the Lewinsky/impeachment mess, but, at this length, one should hope the reader is spared page after page on any one aspect of the Clinton years. At the least, this book provides a quick, relatively satisfying read with some painfully awkward attempts at making history of recent history. At the most . . . well, there's not much else here of note.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Book-Light Read
Review: Perhaps the best quote from this book is refers to Clinton's critics, "What is it about peace and prosperity that you don't like?"This book is a pleasant, light read. It is not very long, it is not overly deep, but it does get to the heart of what made Clinton so successful. It talks about how his many small successes added up. He may not have passed a New Deal or a Great Society, but his many small successes added up to the equivalent of such programs. The problem was that its hard to communicate with the public that the economy was the product of these many small successes. I think it also gets to the point about the Lewinsky matter, and why it actually hurt the Republican Party in the end. The book also decribes how most of the so called scandals of the Clinton Presidency really weren't scandals at all. It was just his opposition party playing politics. They knew he didn't do anything wrong, but they wanted the public to think he did. I also think this book puts into light the problems within the Republican Party itself, as you can see the difference between Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich. Its easy to tell why Bob Dole was a Republican Presidential candidate and Newt Gingrich is gone. Overall, it is a good, brief, light book.
Rating: 
Summary: A decent, brief analysis of Clinton's Presidency
Review: Obviously, the biggest flaw of this book is Klein's attempt to conduct historical analysis a mere 1 year after the end of Clinton's presidency. And beyond that, the book could have been a good deal longer -- it comes in at a scant 217 pages. Having said that, Klein does a decent, if not masterful, job of analyzing Clinton's presidency. Where it's strongest is in highlighting his list of acheivements, which, given all of the scandals, is important, since the biggest ones were not on the forefront of people's minds (defecit reduction, which led to the boom; bailout in Mexico; EITC, which is more important than you would have thought). There was one thing that he highlighted that I found particularly compelling: "In 1986, a single mother who left welfare for work could expect to make about $1900 and lose her health benefits. In 1999, she gets $7000 more and keeps her health beniefits." Anyway, if you're like me -- a moderate-liberal who liked Clinton but was highly disappointed by his presidency -- you'll find it crystallizes what you thought of him. If you hated the guy, at least you'll have a better understanding of what he DID accomplish. And lastly, Klein is at least a smooth and succinct writer, so it's a good read. Not great or monumental; it won't ever stand as the definitive analysis of his presidency; but, given the fact that it is only a year later, it's moderately insightful.
Rating: 
Summary: The Natural
Review: I will buy this book for my library for it's view, however not until it is on the bargain table at Sam's for fifty cents.
Rating:
Summary: The semi-official version
Review: This slim and mediocre book will no doubt be quickly forgotten, but one should consider the "paradox" that is at the core of this book. True irony and complexity is not Klein's style. But facile "paradox" is, and Klein's is that Clinton was an insightful man with clear well thought out proposals for necessary reform. At the same time, however, he was also "often seemed the apotheosis of his generation's alleged sins: moral relativism, the tendency to pay more attention to marketing than to substance, the solipsistic callowness." The hallmark of these vices was his morally dubious affair with Monica Lewinsky. Let's just ponder this for a minute. If Clinton is guilty of moral relativism what are we to say of his critics who condemned his adulteries but said nothing about Netanyahu's and Gingrich's (and who reserved their special venom for the ostensible victim of his acts, his wife)? What are we to say about those who denounced Clinton as a perjurer but who praise Elliott Abrams, a self-confessed deceiver and an apologist for dictatorship and massacre, as a moral conscience for America and American Judaism? More important what do we say about Klein? The massacre of Sbrenicia goes unmentioned and Clinton's contemptible inaction over Rwanda is otherwise ignored. And consider the following: it was Klein's famous article in New York magazine in the fall of 1991 that declared Clinton to be the front-runner before a single vote had been cast. That Klein believed Clinton shared his political opinions was, of course, crucial to this determination. Klein would certainly not have chosen the two most liberal candidates in the race, Senator Tom Harkin, and Governor Jerry Brown. If Clinton had not been there, who would he have chosen? Probably Senator Bob Kerrey of Nevada. Since then Clinton has been "credibly" accused of perjury, adultery and corruption. Kerrey, for his part, has been all too credibly accused of murder and war crimes. What does it say of Klein that he preferred these cheap moralists as an alternative to the dangerous, elitist radicalism of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis? Klein, in other words, is a vapid conformist who cannot tell the difference between transcending two positions and splitting the difference between them. He confuses objectivity and open-mindedness with moving to the winning side. Despite the scandal of the savings and loans industry, campaign finance and the Enron affair, he is a man who firmly believes that a "special interest" is one that is not represented on the editorial board of The New Republic. (Unions, feminists, "minorities" and environmentalists, are the all purpose scapegoats for the Democratic Party's failures). Although he ends his books with portentous comments about the shallowness of American politics, elsewhere he has praised the low turnout rate and narrow ideological specturm that ensures such vacuity. How does this affect his account? As a "tough-minded" ex-liberal Klein enthusiastically supported welfare reform, and naturally praised Clinton's efforts in this regard. In criticizing the "pathology" of the, often black, poor, he could posture about his toughness. And what could be a better target than a weak and despised minority? Scholars such as Thomas Sugrue, Michael Katz and Stephanie Coontz have severely criticized the "culture of poverty" logic that underlined welfare reform, but for one as well-paid as Klein it is no doubt easier to dismiss them as politically correct rather than to refute their arguments. By contrast, Klein could care less about the tens of millions who are uninsured and underinsured. There was no cachet for him to be generous and helpful, and his main criticism of the Clinton health plan was that, as it was not successfully politically, it should not have been tried. This points to a common theme through his book: its endless recitation of conventional wisdom. The Democrats were bad to criticize Bork, Tower and Thomas, the Republicans were wrong over Whitewater and the suicide of Vince Foster. Clinton's political strategy was flawed because it led to the 1994 Congressional defeats. In turn, Newt Gingrich's politics were flawed because he was ultimately unsuccessful. And of course Al Gore was flawed because he ultimately lost, while Klein blames the collapse of the Camp David process on Arafat. There is some merit in what Klein says, since even a broken clock is right twice a day. Clinton's Employment Income Tax Credit did actually do some good and his presidency did oversee some improvement for the majority of Americans whose incomes had been stagnant or declining since 1972. But consider the issues Clinton ignored or fumbled. Tens of millions of people could die of AIDS over the next few decades, millions of lives could be saved with inexpensive medicines. But the pharmaceutical industry prefers to provide viagra to the wealthy and old. Klein uncritically accepts globalization as a good thing, despite the continued agony of Africa, the resentful stagnation of the Middle East, the South East Asia crisis, the collapse of Argentina, and the everpresent failure of market reform in Russia. He says little about Northern Ireland, arguably Clinton's finest foreign policy achievement, and one where he broke with TNR's endless "anti-terrorist" posturing. Klein does not mention Juanita Broadrick, either to confirm or deny, and the judicial murder of the mentally disabled Ricky Ray Rector, committed for no other purpose than to show that Clinton was tough on black criminals, gets only a bland sentence. It is hard, in the end, to avoid the idea that Klein's denunciation of Clinton's shallowness and opportunism, arises from the partial recognition of his own.
Rating:
Summary: Self-Serving and Lacking in Insight
Review: This is not so much a book about the Clinton Presidency as it is an explanations of Joe Klein's 12 year relationship with Clinton, he says that they first met in Philadelphia in 1989. Klein as we all know was the author of Primary Colors, which scorched the President and his wife and which he didn't even have the guts to put his name to, or to admit that he had written when first asked about it. So it is extemerly curious and rather hard to believe when Klein writes in this book that he was surprised when Primary Colors was interpreted as an attack on the President. He says now that Primary Colors was nothing than "a defense of larger than life politicians." Since Clinton was clearly "larger than life," Primary Colors then could only be construed as a bouquet to the Clintons. The fact that he implied that Clinton had fathered illigetimate children and all the rest, I guess was similarly complimentary. Grover Cleveland had fathered illigitmate children and he was also larger than life. Once you have gotten through this dishonest and rather sickening self-explanation of Primary Colors, it is hard to either like Joe Klein or like this book. You become too conscious of the fact that much of it is really Bill and Joe and Joe trying to tell Bill that he never meant to hurt him and telling the rest of us that Billy and Joey are still buds and both like each other very much. Now one would expect in a volume as slim as this, just about 200 pages, that an attempt to reconstruct and analyze the complicated Clinton Presidency would be a tight squeeze. Especially when so much space is actually devoted to the authors use of the word "I." So its frustrating when all of the sudden you find yourself being dragged back to some incident in 1984 when Newt Gingrich annoyed Tip O'Neill, a train of thought that seems to drag on for pages and pages, a high percentafe for sure in this little book. And when Klein does talk about Clinton everything seems either old or not very surprising. The beginning of chapter four, for example, he gives a long rendition of Clinton's "favorite joke," the very same one that graced a profile of Hillary in the pages of New Yorker and I think was written by Connie Bruck not Joe Klein. This is truly an obnoxious book full of self pity and misguided justification, more about Klein than Clinton. In the end its hard to understand or believe exactly what the :misunderstood" part of Clinton's presidency was.Clinton is judged to be a talented- yes larger than life figure, who squandered his presidency. At the end Klein asks Clinton what he could have done, if he kept his libido in check and never gotten involved with Monica. Excuse me, but isn't that exactly what we all know about Clinton. He was a big smart rube from Arkansas who screwed up big-time and even now can't engage in self examination. This book is far too thin and superficial and self-serving to attempt it for him.
Rating:
Summary: too short, unorganized
Review: I got the impression that Mr. Klein just threw together a bunch of odds & ends he had left over from another book and notes -- the way they made the movie "Midway" out of edit-outs from "Tora, Tora, Tora!"
Rating:
Summary: too short, unorganized
Review: I got the impression that Mr. Klein just threw together a bunch of odds & ends he had left over from another book and notes -- the way they made the movie "Midway" out of edit-outs from "Tora, Tora, Tora!"
Rating:
Summary: A balanced and thoughtful review--a rarity!
Review: A rarity indeed in the realm of Clinton literature is an honest and balanced review of the Clinton years. It is not a deep review but a wonderful reconsideration of the Clinton years. Klein is spot on in most of writing--from his accounts of the destruction of Newt Gingrich to the accounts of Clinton's self-destruction. He hammers Clinton particularly hard for the Mark Rich pardon, which makes perfect sense in the context of who Clinton was. Klein makes one very bizarre conclusion. He blames Clinton for the current problems between Israel and the Palestinians. It is unclear how the failed peace talks are really Clinton's fault (don't Barak, Sharon and, of course, the Arafat and his ilk, deserve the blame?). Nevertheless, a rare book that is honest and tempered. And it pulls no punches. Fair and balanced.
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