Bill Clinton grapples with his past in memories – too much, too little, too late | Bill Clinton

In 1992, Bill Clinton defeated George HW Bush, an incumbent Republican president. In 1996, Clinton won re-election over Bob Dole. A former Democratic governor of Arkansas, Clinton had a flair for politics and retail politics. He felt your pain and won the support of voters without a four-year degree and graduate degrees. He played saxophone and stopped Heartbreak Hotel on late night television. He redefined what it meant to be president told a studio audience he preferred briefs to boxers.

He oozed charisma – and more. But his legacy remains deeply tarnished by allegations of predatory behavior and questionable judgment. He is one of three presidents to be impeached — in his case, for lying under oath about his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. Before you leave office, to avoid professional discipline, Clinton surrendered his attorney’s license.

Congress twice impeached Donald Trump. His legal troubles are far broader than Clinton’s. Nevertheless, there are echoes. Back then, Clinton and Trump played golf together, separately in the tabloids. Clinton also crossed paths with Jeffrey Epstein.

Clinton’s fame exceeds his popularity. Like an old-fashioned vaudevillian, the 42nd president, now 78, has a hard time leaving the stage. His second memoir, with the subtitle My life after the White House, is a stab at the image’s rehabilitation and relevance.

Tightly written, the 464-page tome is a protracted walk down memory lane that never quite reaches a desired destination. It’s too much, too little, too late – all at once.

Clinton struggles with her past. In January 1998, news broke that the president, then in his 50s, had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, a 22-year-old intern. It gave a nascent internet culture – mostly modeled after and shaped by Matt Drudge – plenty to talk about.

Newt Gingrich, the soon-to-be-disgraced Speaker of the House, and Ken Starr, an independent adviser turned modern-day Torquemada, did their best to bring Clinton down. Lindsey Graham, then an eager young congressman, now the senior senator from South Carolina and a key Trump ally, dutifully fanned the flames.

Fast forward 30 years. In 2018, NBC’s Craig Melvin asked Clinton if he apologized to Lewinsky. Clinton did not take kindly to the question. He now admits that the interview was “not my finest hour”.

“I live with it all the time,” he writes, reflecting on the affair. “Monica has done a lot of good and important work over the past few years in her campaign against bullying, which has earned her well-deserved recognition in the United States and abroad. I wish her nothing but the best.”

Lewinsky is probably not impressed. In 2021, NBC asked her if Clinton owed her an apology. “I don’t need it,” she said. “He should want to apologize, the same way I’ll apologize any chance I get to people that I’ve hurt and my actions have hurt.”

In her new book, Clinton remains silent on other women who accused him of sexual misconduct — Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick — but carefully repeats Trump’s Access Hollywood moment and widespread allegations of the grope. As for Epstein, the financier and sex offender who killed himself in prison in New York in 2019 and whose connections to Trump are forever debated, Clinton pleads ignorance.

“I had always thought Epstein was strange, but had no idea of ​​the crimes he committed,” he writes. “He hurt a lot of people, but I knew nothing about it and when he was first arrested in 2005, I had stopped contact with him.”

Clinton adds, “I’ve never visited his island.”

Clinton acknowledges two flights, in 2002 and 2003, on Epstein’s plane, infamously known as the “Lolita Express”: “The bottom line is that even if it allowed me to visit the work of my foundation, it was not worth traveling on Epstein’s plane. the years of interrogation afterwards. I wish I had never met him.”

In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the White House. On the page, Bill Clinton burns the memory of his wife’s failed campaigns – although he is always aware of her shortcomings. He acknowledges the significance of her Democratic primary defeat, by Barack Obama in 2008. By blaming the media, Clinton implicitly acknowledges that Obama, then the junior senator from Illinois, was a better candidate than Hillary, then the former first lady and junior senator from New York.

“Obama’s best decision was to launch his campaign early with a full 50-state strategy, something Hillary’s campaign had to develop after she beefed up her leadership team in February,” laments Bill. “But she never really caught up.”

Put differently, 2008 was an election of change. Obama stood on top of history. Hillary was in over her head. She was also the status quo. As for 2016, Clinton blames his wife’s loss on James Comey, the FBI director who investigated her private email use; WikiLeaks, which released Democratic emails; and Vladimir Putin, who exploited such scandals to bolster Trump.

Elsewhere, Clinton revisits her last-minute pardon of Marc Rich—a scandal from the last day of the presidency, January 20, 2001. Denise Rich, the fugitive financier’s ex-wife, donated $450,000 to the Clinton library and wrote to him asking for a pardon.

“I wish Denise hadn’t written to me, for her sake and mine,” Clinton writes. “I knew she had made a lot of money on her own, didn’t get along with her ex-husband and didn’t know he was going to apply for a pardon when she gave money to the library foundation.”

Again, parallels to Trump are clear. At the end of his first term, the 45th president gave get-out-of-jail-free cards to cronies and associates. Charlie Kushner, father of Jared Kushner, was one who benefited. So did Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. A robust pardon pipeline emerged with an ultimate audience of one. Trump will soon exercise the pardon power again.

On the whole, Bill Clinton’s latest book will be remembered for its omissions. It usually works like that.