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

In 1992, Bill Clinton defeated George HW Bush, a sitting Republican president. In 1996, Clinton won re-election over Bob Dole. A former Democratic governor of Arkansas, Clinton had a flair for policy and retail politics. He felt your pain, garnering support from voters without a four-year degree and graduates alike. He played the saxophone, belting out Heartbreak Hotel on late-night TV. Redefining what it meant to be presidential, he told a studio audience he preferred briefs to boxers.

He oozed charisma – and more. But his legacy remains deeply stained by allegations of predatory conduct and questionable judgment. He is one of three presidents to be impeached – in his case, for lying under oath about his extra-marital relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. Before leaving office, to avoid professional discipline, Clinton surrendered his law license.

Congress twice impeached Donald Trump. His legal problems range far wider than Clinton’s. Nonetheless, there are echoes. Back in the day, Clinton and Trump golfed together, each a tabloid fixture. Clinton crossed paths with Jeffrey Epstein too.

Clinton’s fame outstrips his popularity. Like an old-time vaudevillian, the 42nd president, now 78, finds it hard to leave the stage. His second memoir, subtitled My Life After the White House, is a stab at image rehabilitation and relevance.

Densely written, the 464-page tome is a prolonged stroll down memory lane that never quite reaches a desired destination. It is too much, too little, too late – all at once.

Clinton grapples with his 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 – most of it following 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 counsel 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, Craig Melvin of NBC asked Clinton if he apologized to Lewinsky. Clinton did not take kindly to the question. He now admits the interview “was not my finest hour”.

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

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

In his new book, Clinton stays silent about other women who accused him of sexual misconduct – Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick – but gingerly rehashes Trump’s Access Hollywood moment and proliferating allegations of groping. As for Epstein, the financier and sex offender who killed himself in jail in New York in 2019, and whose links to Trump are perennially discussed, Clinton pleads ignorance.

“I had always thought Epstein was odd but had no inkling of the crimes he was committing,” he writes. “He hurt a lot of people, but I knew nothing about it and by the time he was first arrested in 2005, I had stopped contact with him.”

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

Clinton does acknowledge two flights, in 2002 and 2003, on Epstein’s plane, luridly known as the “Lolita Express”: “The bottom line is, even though it allowed me to visit the work of my foundation, traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward. I wish I had never met him.”

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

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

Said differently, 2008 was a change election. Obama stood atop history. Hillary was in over her head. She was also the status quo. As for 2016, Clinton pins 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 capitalized on such scandals in order to boost Trump.

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

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

Again, parallels to Trump are apparent. At the end of his first term, the 45th president gave get-out-of-jail-free cards to cronies and the connected. 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 wield the pardon power again.

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