The book is a cascade of the names of those who crossed the stage with him, but they all get a bow, and Clinton utters hardly a critical word. "My Mother had raised me to look for the good in everybody." Kenneth Starr is of course a justifiable exception, for he littered the landscape with indictments, false confessions and ruined lives of Clinton's friends who resisted his threats. As for the "vituperative" Henry Hyde, Clinton "was sure there must be a Dr. Jekyll in there somewhere, but I was having a hard time finding him." Dick Morris gets a free ride--"triangulation" is never mentioned. Bob Dole almost makes it into the American Pantheon; Newt Gingrich is treated as a political genius. Yasir Arafat told Clinton he was a "great man," but the President replied (sharply?), "I am a failure, and you have made me one." And someday he intends to apologize to Webb Hubbell for failing to pardon him.

Perhaps the most disappointing omission is Clinton's failure to discuss his role--or rather, lack of it--in the 2000 campaign. For Clinton, it must have been like a cold-turkey withdrawal cure from nearly a lifetime habit. It is amazing that during the Bush-Gore debates, the impeachment issue was never raised. Perhaps a stand would have made Gore uncomfortable, and Bush would not dare criticize his party. But then, the debates are not intended to be tough. Gore might have tapped into Clinton's still-powerful support, but he failed to use the President, and probably at some cost. Can it be that Clinton has no thoughts on this? He owes Gore nothing now; but he does owe us some explanation. Was there no role for Clinton, that master politician and campaigner?

Clinton's accomplishments compare favorably with those of other Presidents of the past half-century; unfortunately, however, his shortcomings were more spectacular than most. And history is prone to preserve and magnify the failures. Perhaps his real achievement was a negative, for as he noted: "I had the good fortune to stand against...the forces of reaction and division." His failure on healthcare severely impaired his future credibility. The plan devised by his wife and her team failed to consider the needs and interests of the varied parties, including health professionals and the insurance business. In classic Washington terms, the plan was "dead on arrival."

Clinton's enemies fought him with righteous fervor and mean spirit; his presumptive allies on the left often found themselves uncomfortable with his "dynamic centrism." The irony is that Clinton has been defined by his enemies and detractors, yet few Presidents have left the White House with such high approval ratings by the public. That popularity, by all accounts, persists. Why? Certainly, unlike Reagan, he has not had a servile media, determined to give him a free ride.

Jacob Weisberg has written that Clinton had been more "faithful to his word than any other chief executive in recent memory," yet voters continued to mistrust him, in part because "the media keeps telling them not to trust him." The media have been Clinton's most formidable nemesis. Perhaps it began with his equivocations concerning his draft status, his inability to inhale and his relations with Gennifer Flowers. Running on their own track, with their own purposes, the media nevertheless were handmaidens to those who considered his election and tenure illegitimate. They give the impression that Ross Perot unintentionally made him President, as he siphoned off votes from the Bush base.

The Slick Willie Times was inaugurated along with Clinton. The usual right-wing suspects thrived with criticism ranging from the scurrilous to the obscene. The Wall Street Journal offered a pathological disconnect between the netherworld of its editorial-page judgments of the President and the professionalism of its news columns. Howell Raines's New York Times editorial page turned in a similar direction, encouraging a corps of reporters eager to be Woodstein wannabes. The suffix "gate" offered a shorthand trivialization of Watergate, as the media, dazzled by Watergate and O.J. Simpson, casually segued from an alleged haircut on the Los Angeles airport runway to "Travelgate," Vince Foster's "alleged" suicide and other mercifully forgotten trivialities. The story was always Clinton--all Clinton. Finally, the Times thought it had Watergate all over again with something called Whitewater. Nothing ever developed to substantiate the endless array of wild criminal charges against the Clintons. But the charges spawned Starr and a legal juggernaut to drive Clinton from office. His most important tale, the basis for his history and legacy, is of the conspiracy--that's the only possible word--to destroy, not just defeat, him. After special prosecutor Robert Fiske, a Republican, determined that the Whitewater story had no relation to the President or his wife, a panel of federal judges, appointed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, dismissed Fiske and appointed Starr in his place. Starr revived and expanded the investigation; "it was," Clinton writes, "about whatever Ken Starr could dig up on anybody in Arkansas or my administration." Clinton found his Javert.

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