My Review of "My Life"
I. Why Bill Clinton's Story Matters To Me
(I'm still unsure on how many parts this will be written in)
I'll try my best to avoid self-indulgance in this section (if not throughout). I make no promises because the temptation is too present. There's a great deal of Bill Clinton's life and his rise to the Presidency that I can relate to. In reading My Life, I take perhaps a similar journey that Clinton himself takes to understand his own past and put it into the context of his career up to the present. In my own case, I view the points in which I grew up in the south and shared the ideological predisposition that Bill Clinton came to embody in 1992. In many ways, there are similarities - eerie ones even. But given that I don't see myself to aspiring to anything as great as President, such comparisons are a stretch (to put it mildly). Nevertheless, reading My Life is too easy for my part. Without having lived through even the same experiences, I've either been proximite to many of the same stories or, at worst, have read much of this history as it unfolded in the early 1990s. I'll leave it to others to pick apart the finer details of the book, no doubt implying that any and all imperfections are a character flaw on Clinton's part rather than the graying of history as it is sometimes told in the hindsight that 50 or so years (or the fast-forward life of an American President) can sometimes muddle. Instead, I'll view the book as a retelling of the history I saw, that I lived through, and that I invested a share of hope in.
Perhaps caving in to self-indulgence, I'll offer the two most poignant historical touch points of my own that offer the greatest appreciation as to why, despite the more-than-evident "warts and all" that plague Bill Clinton, I bother with this endeavor. First off, are the five years spent growing up in Sunflower County, Mississippi. "Gee, five whole years" the reader might be excused for sarcastically pointing out - as if the other 30 or so I've endured haven't left those five well behind. Understandable, I suppose. But given the formative nature of those five years (we moved there at age 6 or so, I attended grades 1 through 5) as well as what I still think is a unique experience of growing up in such environs, I think it offers enough insight. Not the sort that offers omniscient insight into all things southern, but enough of an appreciation that drives one to try to understand it ever more, even after moving back to my home state of Texas and residing in the big city for many many more years, where I claim a more natural comfort.
The experience of living in a small town in the rural south may be unique in some ways, I've not attempted to compare and contrast it with other experiences. But one aspect unique to it seems to be that in order for many to be successful, one must leave. When my family arrived, my mother saw to it that my sister and I had a few books on Texas history so that we would know for once and always that we were Texans. Suffice it to say, we possessed a more-than-typical amount of sense of home about us. Yet when you get to the desolate Mississippi Delta, you don't see a great deal of opportunity unless you are already a member of a certain family, have solid enough societal connections to said families, or possess just enough good luck to make your own way (and precious few did). So it was with a great deal of irony that we would leave Texas with a tinge of regret about leaving, but with a sense of where our roots were, only to arrive at a place where leaving home had to be more commonplace to see success. When I would later read books and see movies based on both the Civil Rights movement and the leadup to same during the 40s and 50s, I'd see the same theme played out even moreso among southern blacks. Credit it with my first realization that something was wrong with any system that demanded one be uprooted to explore opportunity of any kind.
Living in the south is to live with irony all around you. Nobody "hated" blacks, but nobody (in "white" Sunflower, that is) would hire them either ... for fear they would drive all the "others" away. Nobody was against equality of opportunity. Yet the school I attended: Indianola Academy, was a private school established to stave off integration in the 60s. It still thrives, albeit with a black student or two. Sunflower County is over 50% black, it should be noted. The town of Sunflower is about the same makeup. But the mayor of my day (nice guy, I frequently played with his son and had a crush on his daughters) was white. I once drove my bike across the railroad tracks that literally separated black and white Sunflower into "black" Sunflower. I was surprised to see so many people I'd never seen before despite the fact that I played baseball in the park right across from them, on the other side of the tracks. That surprise was quickly surpassed by the surprise of having every racial epithet hurled my way as I peddled said bike quicker than I had ever done so before to avoid a rock or two headed my way. One of the safer places in "black" Sunflower was the black grocery store. I'd occassionally be sent there to get cigarettes for our maid. On other occassions, a friend and I would trek there to sift through coke bottle tops in order to find the magical peice needed to win some prize in a Bicentennial contest that Coke was running. It was more pleasant there as the manager always made us welcome and getting a drink or two was less cumbersome than the smaller local shop on the white side in which we were eyed more suspiciously (one of my friend's brothers would frequently scam that owner, so we never got any slack) Making heads or tales of anything this complex, as you can see, can take a lifetime. When word leaked that My Life would clock in at 957 pages, I was not surprised in the slightest.
The second is my own political coming of age, in which I tried to make heads or tails of how to fit numerous conservative convictions with another faith, that the Democratic Party was one I most closely identified with. Was I the only person to view Walter Mondale & Ronald Reagan, side with Mondale, and then go on to view issues such as education, social security, abortion, and foreign affairs in a way that would be anathema to the likes of Mondale? Maybe not ... but it sure feels like it at times. As the Democratic Leadership Council made its mark in the aftermath of 1984, I took note, followed the likes of Chuck Robb and Sam Nunn devoutly, and sold my soul for a shot to head out to Washington DC in the summer of 1989 as an intern at either the DLC or some like minded member of Congress. That effort would lead to the best three months of my life up till then, interning with the new DLC spinoff think tank: the Progressive Policy Institute. I arrived to work about an hour or so before my onetime hometown congressman, House Speaker Jim Wright, announced his resignation in the face of ethics charges. My first major responsibility was to deliver a Robert Shapiro white paper to each Senator's office in which the Earned Income Tax Credit was offered as an alternative to raising the minimum wage. I met my Senator, Lloyd Bentsen, that day. I mentioned that I had the privelage of voting for him twice in the prior election and said it was an honor to have met him. I had the phone numbers of such thinkers as Charlie Moskos on my rolodex, calling him for a detail being researched by one of our policy wonks. Moskos could not answer the question, I recall. I later found the answer I needed ... in a book authored by none other than Charlie Moskos. I sat in with a full meeting of DLC & PPI staff (plus authors Elaine Kamarck and Bill Galston) in which the foundations of "The Politics of Evasion" were laid out. I can hear Will Marshall's recitation of Presidential voting history as if it were yesterday and still credit many of the points he made that day with reaffirming my own political worldview. I've yet to chip in a dollar to the DLC other than purchase of their 1993 tome "Mandate for Change" at the bookstore, but I've since considered myself an unapologetic Democrat in the vein of Al From's DLC and Will Marshall's PPI.
By the time Bill Clinton announced his run for the White House, I knew who my candidate was. There wasn't a great deal of hesitation, although I had the good pleasure of attending a Bob Kerrey event in Houston. I'd read Paul Tsongas' books, appreciated his worldview greatly, but after 1988, being from Massachusetts was not exactly a plus, even if one had given the single greatest speach on the failures of liberalism to the ADA earlier in his career. Despite the respect accorded others, myself and others all knew it was Bill Clinton's year. To my great pleasure, he had the right message too ... that lifted straight from the corridors of the DLC & PPI (which had precisely one corridor separating their offices at the time). It was heaven.
Yet the Peggy Noonan quote of "never fall in love with a politician" became evident throughout Clinton's time, as one was repeatedly exposed to the fallacy of human nature. In an administration beset by secrecy that, at times, would make Nixon blush; an administration beset by numerous faulty compromises and more occassional demonstrations of poor judgement than a disciple such as myself takes pleasure in pointing out; one that would leave an indelible stain on political history by raising personal failure to the light of an impeachment struggle; one that would, at varying times, muddle the meaning of the DLC/PPI worldview of "Responsibility, Opportunity, and Community" with "triangulation" or outright caving, to the extent that such worthy goals and dreams would become anathema in the very party that Clinton had rehabilitated ... all of this is a difficult pill to swallow. In the end, is Bill Clinton's time in office to be viewed as a failure for these reasons ... or a success to the extent he made it palatable for Democrats to discuss matters such as free trade and fiscal accountability with a straight face? As with many such debates, the truth lies in the middle ... another of our many lengthy looks to the past for meaning, I suppose. In the OpinionDuel.com debate between John Judis and Rich Lowry on Clinton's legacy, it was noted (by Judis) that Clinton cannot be viewed as a failure for not living up to some of his 1992 goals, lest we count Ronald Reagan a failure for not living up to some of his 1980 goals. I have to concur. After eight years, the success one does have often comes at odds with what one often states a desire to be successful for. Its this investigation into history that nags at the reader as we move from the early years to Clinton's Presidential years. But let's take this in step with the book for now.
(NOTE: Reading progress was uneven over the long weekend, as I'm essentially through the college years now. Part 2 should be up tomorrow, but I'll forewarn the reader that a day or two may be skipped over to reach a good enough point to stop and review during the week.)