Kirkus Review
The latest in the excellent American Presidents series explores the life and career of Bill Clinton (b. 1946).In this entertaining biography of a virtuoso politician whose administration (1993-2001) revived the fortunes of the Democratic Party without reversing the nations post-Reagan conservative swing, political journalist Tomasky (Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Beatles and America, Then and Now, 2014, etc.) shows how his brilliant and charismatic subject aimed at a political career from childhood. After a bruising education in state politics and multiple terms as the governor of Arkansas, he outmaneuvered better-known candidates to win the 1992 Democratic nomination. The first baby-boomer president, he was a New Democrat who aimed to keep his distance from some old line liberal ideas, adapt and modify a few Republican ones, and exist as an independent force separate from both parties. His success was spotty. Major bills such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, Defense of Marriage Act, and welfare reform were more popular with Republicans than Democrats and remain so. Most Republicans hated his national health plan, and they easily defeated it and then won a crushing victory in the 1994 midterm elections. Despite lofty goals in its contract with America, this aggressive Congressional majority became obsessed with Clintons spectacularly foolish sexual peccadilloes. Although legislators proclaimed that impure morals rendered a president unfit and the much-denounced liberal media shared their outrage, the electorate did not, and Clinton left office more popular than when he entered and remains popular. The author is clearly an admirer but is also painfully aware of Clintons failures. Tomaskys slim, journalistic account contains few surprises for older readers familiar with that era, but they should wait a generation until the dust settles and scholars determine if Clinton deserves his current respectable rating in the pantheon of presidents. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
WHAT BIOGRAPHER COULD possibly envy Michael Tomasky? As part of the American Presidents series edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died in 2007, and Sean Wilentz, Tomasky drew the assignment of squeezing the life and times of William Jefferson Clinton into a volume "compact enough for the busy reader," as Schlesinger put it. This is an easy enough task, say, in the case of William Henry Harrison, who served for just one month before dying of pneumonia, considerately allowing his biographer in this series, Gail Collins, to focus on his far more eventful and boisterous campaign. Clinton did not perish during his presidency, but as Tomasky aptly observes in "Bill Clinton," "his most notable accomplishment was simply surviving." Nothing underscores that feat better than the fact that Clinton was one of only two presidents to be impeached (he, like Andrew Johnson, was acquitted by the Senate). Tomasky's invaluable contribution is to remind us just how much Clinton did accomplish during his presidency - and how much achievements like Nafta and welfare reform depended on him slicing deals to attract enough Republican votes to offset Democratic opponents in Congress. Tomasky is especially strong on the economic anxieties of the Democratic voter that propelled Clinton to victory and remained a priority for him during his presidency, which, as Tomasky points out in his epilogue, makes it even more mystifying that Hillary Clinton failed to capitalize on those same anxieties in the 2016 presidential campaign, as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump did. If Tomasky has a blind spot, it is his handling of Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He calls Clinton's behavior "unfathomably irresponsible," and details how the conservative media stoked the news. Yet in his argument that the furor was largely disproportionate to the relationship, Tomasky blames the "rages" of Howell Raines, then the Times editorial page editor, and several of the paper's columnists for adding to the bonfire, neglecting to mention that The Times rejected impeachment as the punishment. As for Lewinsky, he never touches on how unfairly the press trashed her or on the alleged campaign by the Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal to besmirch her. To be fair, Tomasky is not only trying to cram into 150 pages what dozens of other writers have covered in thousands, but he is also writing about a president of recent vintage who remains a polarizing figure and who has led a post-White House life filled with deeds both good and suspect (see the dealings of the Clinton Foundation). His legacy, unavoidably, was a subcurrent of his wife's presidential campaign, starting with the reasonable assumption that Hillary Clinton would never have been the Democratic nominee in 2012 (or the close runner-up in 2008) if her husband had not been a popular 42nd president of the United States. Tomasky makes no attempt to hide his 2016 presidential preference by noting that Trump's victory brought the Clinton era to a "horrifying close." He declines to expound on why Trump won, but that is only fair since the 45th president's story awaits its own volume in this series. And if Tomasky's task of compression was unenviable. . . . JIM KELLY, is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He was the managing editor of Time magazine from 2001 to 2006.