Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #529454 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 784 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Ah, the British accent! Time-tested shield for all literary sins and effective cover for this exhaustive rehash of Clinton-era misdemeanors and scandals. Brit James Adams (identified as one of the world's leading authorities on terrorism) reads the second volume of fellow Brit Hamilton's biography of the 42nd president. Beginning with Clinton's inauguration, Hamilton documents the man from Hope's missteps, from gays in the military to Monica Lewinsky, reserving extra snark for every mention of first lady and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Adams reads with fruity upper-crust flair, but even his mellifluousness cannot hide the warmed-over stench of Hamilton's tired prose. Anglophiles will enjoy hearing Adams read, undoubtedly, but appreciators of Bill Clinton—or, really, anyone who possesses anything less than a fanatical hatred of him—will find Hamilton's work rough sledding.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Bryan Burrough

An editor of this fine newspaper sent me Nigel Hamilton's new book, Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency, back in May. It sat on the far end of my desk, unopened, for a solid month; every morning I glared at it. Jesus. Another Clinton book. If there is Clinton fatigue in the political arena, I suspect it pales before that in publishing. Monica. Travelgate. Whitewater. Oh, please, I thought. Not again.

Yes, again. But that's okay. Franklin Roosevelt has been gone 60 years, and still authors are cranking out fresh works on his life and presidency, the successful ones furnishing some new information, angle or analysis. Nigel Hamilton's claim to a similarly new path through the well-worn Terra Clintonis is twofold. The book chronicles only Clinton's first term, and as Hamilton states in his introduction, he wants to focus on how Clinton functioned as a leader. Well, all right. I'm game.

A hundred pages in, I put the book down, deeply ambivalent. This book should be better than it is. Hamilton, author of JFK: Reckless Youth as well as a book on Clinton's pre-White House years, has a good story in his hands. He tells it chronologically, starting with Bill and Hillary leading their post-inaugural march of idealistic yuppie Democrats through the streets of Washington toward the White House. Has there ever been a president less prepared for the Oval Office? The transition is disastrous, the president chronically disorganized, the staff woefully inexperienced. "It was as if the students of Clinton Junior High had taken over the controls of the world's most powerful nation," Hamilton writes, a nice line. The result: Hillary's health-care fiasco, gays in the military, Hairgate and one of the worst first years in presidential history.

Part of the problem is that Hamilton isn't writing narrative history a la Robert Caro. I think this is the kind of book they call a "study," meaning the author's insights matter more than a steady recitation of relevant facts. Which is fine. Bill Clinton zips along on a tide of quotes from newspapers of the day and earlier Clinton books, augmented by a handful of interviews Hamilton appears to have done with the Leon Panettas and Alice Rivlins of the world. But if a book is to succeed on fresh analysis rather than fresh information, the analysis has to be something pretty special.

Hamilton's, alas, is not. Clinton is sloppy and disorganized. Check. Clinton is empathetic. Got it. Indecisive. Right. Talks things to death. Can't fire subordinates. Doesn't understand Washington. Okay, okay, we know this. Hillary as nasty, arrogant co-president. Yes, we know this story, too. So what's new? What is the value Hamilton is adding atop everything that has come before? To be kind, that's unclear.

Hamilton's m.o. is to lay out the facts as others have reported them, then freestyle his own analytical riffs, which are replete with oddish analogies, including lessons from Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Anna Karenina, The Remains of the Day and maybe Led Zeppelin II; I can't be sure about that last one. His writing, while brisk and clear, is likewise a tad strange. It's the rare presidential biographer who pockmarks his prose with exclamation points and modern-day slang; I can't actually recall whether Arthur Schlesinger used "diss" as a verb or not, but I tend to doubt it. Nonetheless, I mean, yo, I'm down with that. At least he doesn't call the president phat.

Authorial idiosyncrasies aside, the book has its merits. Hamilton ably illustrates Clinton's strengths and weaknesses as a leader, how he thrived whenever the occasion called for him to inspire or commiserate, and how time and again his failures could be traced to what Hamilton calls his "inability to function as a manager of men and women in a structured environment." Clinton's may have been the first seat-of-the-pants presidency, with no organization charts and crucial decisions made in late-night bull sessions, at least until Leon Panetta arrived as chief of staff to bring some order to the classroom.

And a few of Hamilton's insights do feel fresh. He is especially smart on the internal dynamics of Hillary's famed right-wing conspiracy, advancing the case that it was Clinton's own failures during his first year in office that emboldened those Arkansas troopers to come forward in 1993, which led to David Brock, Paula Jones and the long national stumble down sleazy street. In an observation he might have explored further, Hamilton terms Clinton's a "charismatic" rather than an "executive" presidency, which is a nice way of saying the man could exhort his followers to walk on water, which was a good thing, given that he was singularly unable to build them a bridge. All in all, though, Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency has a once-over-lightly feel to it, making it a minor contribution to the Clinton canon.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
In the wake of the almost simultaneous publication of two biographies of Hillary Clinton (Gerth and Van Natta's Her Way and Bernstein's Woman in Charge), it is interesting to once again view the first Clinton administration with the focus on the president, not the first lady. Hamilton, in this sequel to Bill Clinton: An American Journey (2003), examines the forty-second president's first term. By no means unsympathetic to Clinton, Hamilton views his subject as a man with a big heart and a big brain but also with a shocking inability to make decisions or manage personnel. Hamilton's strength is in making the most of the many secondary sources he relies upon, but he also draws material from some out-of-the-ordinary interviews, including one with Cliff Jackson, a Clinton rival and eventual enemy who helped bring Troopergate (the scandal over Clinton's extramarital affairs in Arkansas) to light. The only instance of using overtly slanted sources comes in the opening chapter, when Hamilton relates Gary Aldrich's version of an incident focusing on a foulmouthed first lady (Aldrich has been widely discredited and was not used by either Bernstein or Gerth and Van Natta). That lapse aside, this volume provides a straightforward and effective recounting of the ups and downs of a presidency shaped as much by personality as by policy. Cooper, Ilene

Customer Reviews

Fascinating Material!
Nigel Hamilton chronicles the first Clinton term, covering all the (mostly) bad and good, including his reinvention after the 1994 mid-term elections. Its amazing that despite Bill and Hillary making so many major mistakes, Bill came back to win a second term (and make his biggest mistake of all - Monica).

Hamilton has no reservation in identifying Clinton's transition into the Presidency as the worst ever - beginning with his failure to appoint an effective chief of staff. (This is a topic Hamilton repeatedly returns to, contributing to Clinton's early lack of focus and being victimized by weak members of his administration. It does not get resolved until almost two years later.) It is also interesting (and scary) to read of Hillary's temper tantrums, beginning even prior to the Inauguration - concerning her wanting to take over the traditional V.P. office in the West Wing. Her decision-making also was a problem - eg. her choice for Attorney General (Zoe Baird) and for Attorney General in charge of civil rights (Lani Guinier) - despite warnings to the contrary, both nominations went forward and both went down in flames.

Then there was Clinton's early move to permit gays in the military (backed down, looking indecisive), Hillary's locking correspondents out of access to the White House press office, Hillary being appointed to reform health care in 131 days (she acerbated the problem with secrecy and refusing to even talk to industry insiders), the Waco fiasco, LAX "Hairgate,), Hillary's "Travelgate," the Vince Foster suicide (followed by Hillary's orders to remove her personal papers prior to any investigation), Black Hawk down in Somalia (Clinton expanded the mission while troops were cut 90% and Defense Sec. Aspin refused to send the requested armor), the troop-ship Harlan County carrying President Aristide being turned away by Haitians chanting "Somalia," "Troopergate" - allegedly procured and lied for Bill Clinton, Paula Jones, Watergate (no illegal Clinton action, by Hillary inflamed the issue by refusing to turn over documents), and Gennifer Flowers and Dolly Browning.

Then came New Gingrich and his "Contract with America," vs. a public perception that Clinton had no agenda. After losing both the House and Senate to Republicans, Clinton then re-invented himself as he moved to the center, and became a successful President.

Excellent biography on the first term of President Clinton
In the dozen or so books that I have read about Bill Clinton including his autobiography Nigel Hamilton's books always stand our. These are among the most balanced and well thought out books written on the presidency of Clinton. Hamilton takes time for painstaking research of not only presidential archives but newspapers and voluminous secondary sources. This book which follows Clinton's rise to the presidency and his time as governor focuses on the first term in office. It accurately and effectively assess the first years where Clinton learned how to be president. The book encompasses several areas from the scandals, the role of Hillary in the White House and of course domestic and foreign affairs.

The start of his first term can only be described in one word: disaster. Clinton was unable to effectively set up a transition team which would plague him through his early years in office when many of his candidates particularly in the justice department would have to resign over various scandals. Clinton himself was plagued by the scandals of Troopergate and Paula Jones while fending off his wife's scandals in Whitewater and Travelgate. These early years and political naiveté of the president were mastered by the end. As Hamilton points out and Clinton admits in his autobiography the stonewalling tactics that were used in these early scandals only fanned the flames quicker and in many cases particularly with Whitewater dragged the case along further than necessary. These scandals followed several legislative failures and executive failures from universal healthcare reform to gays in the military. Despite this those first two years were not entirely dark. The passage of NAFTA and the Oslo Peace accords were triumphs that came out of these dark days of his early presidency and a tax cut package that saved the American economy proved viable.

Hamilton argues that Bill Clinton finally began to master the presidency and appear presidential after two events. In his previous book Hamilton shows that Bill Clinton is at his finest when he is running for office. When Clinton decides to fight the contract of America and use Dick Morris triangulation arguments to reposition himself as a candidate he is given for the first time a solid position to run from since 1992. The bombing of the Oklahoma building was the second event that helped redefine his presidency. Here Clinton was able to be at his finest when empathizing with people and demonstrates leadership. He ends his co-presidentship with his wife and takes responsibility to lead the nation doing an impressive job for most people and his approval ratings soar. The Bosnian crisis gave President Clinton the best chance to showcase leadership and coupled with the republican shutdown of government he emerged on top of his republican opponents.

In the final analysis of President ClintonÂ’s first term he is seen as a brilliant politician but a flawed man. The scandals and poor organization of the White House plagued Clinton and forced him to spend his first two years at a public relations disadvantage. HamiltonÂ’s work is one of the best accounts on Bill Clinton and one of the fairest. It is encompassing of a wide range of sources and fairly asses them to come to logical conclusions.

Highly recommended
Obviously well-researched with fascinating, real-life detail, the book presents a considered, coherent and integrated contour of events and the personalities which shaped them. Penetrating where journalism so often founders. History will thank Nigel Hamilton for telling the truth. Though his timing may be inconvenient, the telling preserves the standards of Diogenes. Illuminating. A must read.