Richard Cohen: Clinton Memoir of Little Value to Historians

The good news for Bill Clinton is that his book,"My Life," sold about 100,000 copies at Barnes & Noble stores the first day it was on sale, a record for the chain. The bad news for Bill Clinton is that the book sold about 100,000 copies at Barnes & Noble stores, a record for the chain. The book may make Clinton rich. It will not rehabilitate him.

The pity of it is that Clinton went for the bucks. That's understandable, since he never had much money and left office with a mountain of legal and other debts. But ever since Jerry Ford pioneered the franchising of the presidency -- there was virtually nothing he would not do for the right fee -- huge riches have awaited any former occupant of the White House. Solvency would have come to Clinton, if it has not already, even without his $10 million book advance. Clinton took the money -- and the obligation that came with it: write the sort of book that could be promoted on"Oprah." Clinton more or less did that.

The early reviews have been eviscerating, particularly the one in the New York Times. Its chief reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, somehow managed to read 957 pages in what must have been about a day and pronounced the book a mess --"sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull." Other reviews have reached similar conclusions (although some feel otherwise), but suffice it to say that it is not being universally hailed as a triumph -- a book as brilliant as its author.

My own hurried perusal of the tome leads me to support Kakutani. Although in his acknowledgment Clinton thanks his editor, Robert Gottlieb, for teaching him about"hard cuts," it sometimes seems that nothing has been cut. We get, for instance, an appreciation of the Grand Canyon in late afternoon:"It was amazing the way the rocks, compressed into distinct layers over millions of years, changed colors as the canyon darkened from the bottom up." Nice, but can we move on?

To a large extent, Ulysses S. Grant's presidency was rehabilitated by his memoirs, written as the Civil War general was dying of cancer. Richard Nixon, virtually banished from Washington, wrote book after book from his exurban Elba in New Jersey. Watergate haunted him, as it should have, but slowly we came to realize that he possessed a first-class mind, keenly analytical, occasionally wise. No one could say that Nixon did not have gravitas.

Clinton, too, has a first-class mind -- I have observed him long enough to tell you that -- but this book, and especially the attendant publicity, obscures it. The people who lined up long before dawn to buy a copy were not drooling to find out about health care or the budget. Instead they were seeking a piece of Clinton -- like a souvenir or an autograph. He has emerged as the uber-celebrity of our times, beloved for his good looks, his charm and, paradoxically, the sex scandal that almost doomed his presidency....