Woodward on the Clinton White House

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6 June 2021 - Eknes

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Bob Woodward has written about American presidents for decades, famously bringing down the Nixon presidency with his dogged reporting on the Watergate break in. The Agenda was similar to other Woodward books, although the criticism of Clinton was definitely lighter than that of Trump in the last couple I read. Clinton mainly comes off as disorganized and unprincipled, that is, no one is really sure what he believes in because he's such a chameleon. Woodward fails to realize in writing this first book on Clinton what a political asset that was for him. Woodward clearly paints a picture though of how a supposedly idealistic Clinton gets mired in the politics of Washington. While this is a somewhat naïve picture of Clinton, the description of the disorganization of his White House definitely rings true. Overall I'd recommend it for a contemporary look into the day to day happenings the presidency during that period.

Personally I enjoyed delving back into my teen years, as I was often following politics at the time and have always admired Clinton's oratory and chameleon abilities. When he spoke he was like a mirror inviting you to see what you believed in what he was saying. It taught alot of us how to parse language careful as well as some of us to imitate his ability to mislead without lying. I have definitely been guilty of the later both to avoid conflict and get what I wanted in my younger years. I also borrowed the book from my dad's library last month to read on the beach, which is ironic because my dad was never a fan of Clinton and teen me honed my policital understanding with him in arguments about Clinton. When my dad met Clinton before he was president, he came and told us he'd just met the southern JFK, something he definitely did not mean as a compliment.

The book also gave us a look into some of the earlier stages of Al Gore (obsessing over the BTU tax he wanted to use to force people to replace oil with natural gas) and Hillary Clinton (going from angry at the media to ignoring it and acting as her husband's protector). One also sees glimpses of the disfunction of Congress that would shortly lead to Newt Gingrich's rise to the Speakership and the power play Bob Dole was making that would end with his failed presidential bid in '96. 30 years later James Carville and George Stephanapoulos are also still Democrat pundits regularly in the media. No doubt Woodward's books remain so interesting beacuse they are so contemporary and feature an innumerable wealth of side characters who often go on to have their own political main acts.

Even if you're not a nineties kid, this one is still worth picking up.