David Maraniss
Associate Editor, The Washington Post
"The Clinton Legacy: Reality and Illusions"
January 29, 2001

David Maraniss: Thank you Ken. I hope I can say something worthy of this great crowd and the turnout today. I guess the paperback version of the Rise of the Prince of Tennessee will be the Rise and Fall of Al Gore. Or Maybe the rise and fall and possible rise again.

I am reminded of this at this moment in my career: here I am, the biographer of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and someone else, George W. Bush, is now president. It reminds me of the spring of 1995 when my biography of Bill Clinton first came out and I was at a book party. It was when Newt Gingrich was triumphant and Bill Clinton was struggling to show that he had any relevance in Washington. At my book party in Washington, my publisher Donald Graham walked up to me and muttered sarcastically, "Great timing Maraniss. Nobody cares about Clinton." But I argued then that Clinton would find his way back and into trouble again. It was the endless cycle that was the central theme of my book.

So now we have the tale of two leavings. All of my characters are leaving the stage — at least somewhat. The Clintons did it in what was, I would argue, quintessential Clintonian fashion. I think Bill Clinton actually learned how to be president in his final years as president. I think he was about to leave in, for him, relatively good graces and then he couldn’t help himself. So that final few days was just . . . He didn’t want to leave. Even during the impeachment era, I always said that you had to cut off both arms and legs to get him out of the White House. And on the final days of his presidency, it actually proved to be true. Even as George W. Bush had already been sworn in, Bill Clinton was dominating the stage as much as possible and giving one speech after another on that final day. Taken together with the pardons and Hillary’s book deal, the gifts he took with him out of the White House and the two houses, some people, even some of his closest friends, found all of this soemwhat excessive. Each one of those events in and of itself was not much different from what other presidents or political figures would do. But in their totality, in combination with Clinton’s reluctance to leave, it was not very graceful. It was another unfortunate example of this man who, when he is down always finds his way out and when he is on top always finds someway to damage himself. It certainly was not the most beautiful exit.

I would contrast this with Al Gore’s departure. Gore was a clumsier politician than Bill Clinton. Gore’s father, Al Gore, Sr, the senator from Tennessee, once said that politicians die hard. And few politicians died as hard as Al Gore this year: fighting through the election to a 36 day post-election struggle, spending virtually every hour of those 36 days keeping track of what was happening with his lawyers in Florida and trying to learn the intricate details of Florida election laws and what all of those phrases, that we became aware of and sick of rather quickly, really meant. He worked the phones diligently night after night, refused to concede, thinking he had really won the election, which perhaps he did, and then finally gave his speech on Dec 12th or 13th. Perhaps if he had been able to speak like that for the entire campaign, there never would have been this post-election struggle. He would have been president. In finally conceding his loss on that one night, he exited with what most people would consider real grace. It was a contrast, I think, with his partner for eight years, Bill Clinton. The way they left said something about each of them, for better or worse.

So what is the meaning of those eight years they were in Washington? When he was being lionized in the late 60s, m y other subject, Vince Lombardi once said, "legacy schmegacy". He didn’t believe it or he didn’t know what the future would say about him or anyone else. I felt that way over the past few months as people asked me to talk about the Clinton legacy. It think it is an overworked phrase, particularly at this point when there is so much to be settled by history. But I think one thing is clear: Clinton left us all exhausted — perhaps me more than you, but also, in essence, the country. Such a brilliant, ingenious, frustrating man, he was never a boring president. It was exhausting.

I always start with Clinton in the winter of 1993, January 17th, the day before he left Little Rock for Washington. He exited the governor’s mansion in Little Rock for the last time for a jog. Carrying a shoe box under his arm, he jogged from the mansion all the way through downtown Little Rock to the Arkansas River. When he arrived at the river, he scrambled down the embankment, opened up the shoe box and let out a little toad that Chelsea had kept in the governor’s mansion. He said, "someone in our family has to live a normal life." Boy was he right. The lucky frog.

The word you hear most about his presidency, from his critics but also his supporters, is the word squandered. In one sense this was obvious: some time was lost. But on the other hand, in my effort to explain Bill Clinton, I think it is an irrelevant point. For squandering is part of Clinton; it is inseparable from the good that he does. There are two central themes that I have used to talk about Clinton over the years: one is the endless cycle of loss and recovery which played itself out even until the last day; the other is that there is a duality in Clinton but it is inseparable. You cannot separate the good from the bad in him. The same appetites that drive him in good ways also get him into trouble. It is just Bill Clinton. You may look at his presidency as great promise squandered. True, but it is Bill Clinton. The accomplishments that he made were because of the way that he is and the problems he got himself into are equally because of that. It is not that I am a fatalist or don’t believe in free will. But my understanding of Bill Clinton has led me to a different point. I don’t think so much of the possibilities or the good that could have happened that he didn’t accomplish because of his problems. Rather, the balance is always there. That is Bill Clinton.

He came into office with two themes. First, he was a survivor. Even those that knew little about his history, knew that he was a survivor. During the election we all saw that incredible ability to survive. Starting with the Gennifer Flowers ( I hate to go back to all of that stuff now), through everything that happened in 1992, Bill Clinton appeared to be a survivor. And the other thing he went into office with was the economy’s {?} And in that sense Clinton was true to himself for those eight years. His presidency played out the personal problems that were evident in his campaign and also his ability to survive them. His presidency also played out an emphasis on the economy. If Bill Clinton were in the room right now, he could go on an absolute ethereal riff -- I have counted it out to 15 minutes -- on the accomplishments that he had in terms of the economy.

This focus on the economy was a part of his presidency, a large part of it. Some parts of it were a Ken Thompson/ Rockefeller presidency: from welfare reform to an understanding of the bond market and stocks and bringing in Robert Rubin to control all of that in a fairly effective way. It also included balancing the budget, supporting NAFTA and GAT against the will of his party, and understanding the role of free trade in the global economy. In sum, they were sort of moderate Republican accomplishments with the economy. Really, these initiatives overwhelmed the major efforts, more likely considered liberal or democratic, in his domestic policy. His first tax initiative in 1993 really had to back away from the spending on infrastructure that he wanted to do and focus more on balancing the budget. We all know about his health care initiative, which for a lot of different reasons was not enacted, some of which was attributable to Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary and others to the massive amounts of money spent by opponents to that effort.

I was fascinated by health care because once again it played out Bill Clinton’s life. He had an implicit faith that anything that he gave to Hillary Rodham Clinton would turn out right. Since they met at Yale Law School in 1970, it had always been that way. Certainly, during their 12 years in the governor’s mansion in Arkansas, it was Hillary who developed the education reform package and headed the task force that made Bill Clinton a national figure and a national name, which got him into the White House in the first place. So it was, of course, natural of him to turn to her for the most important initiative of the first term. But it was a mistake. It was hard for other people in the White House to try to steer or criticize or debate the issue when it was the president’s wife who was running it. It creates a different dynamic.

There was another part of health care that surprised me. Without boasting about my understanding of Clinton, there have not been too many times in his presidency where he did something that surprised him. But I was honestly surprised in that first term, particularly on health care but also other issues, by his clumsiness in dealing with Congress. Of course, it is true that he had never been a congressman or senator. But he had gone to Georgetown precisely because he wanted to come to Washington to study, not the books, but the politics of the place. During that period, he had worked for senator William Fullbright, his home state hero on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Even though he was supposed to be a clerk in the back rooms, he spent most of his time going around talking to any congressman he could find and watching the hearings and getting a feeling for how the place worked. Of course he ran for congress in 1974 and that was his first ambition. It would have been a very different Bill Clinton if he had gone to Washington then.

But in any case, in his years as governor he probably spent more time in Washington than any other governor. He went to committee hearings and worked on welfare reform and other issues. And yet when he became president he was incredibly naive about how to deal with Congress: how to deal with congressional committee chairmen, how to put together a package so that they feel invested in it. In contrast, in his first week George W. Bush has demonstrated another method.. Perhaps he learned from Clinton’s mistakes or maybe never was prone to them, but he has shown a somewhat different tack. Clinton’s domestic successees tended to be more the moderate Republican successes and his failures, the liberal agenda of the health care reform.

For the historians and the legacy, the question about the economy and the question of reality or illusion is this: Will it last? Will it mean anything in thirty years? Will President Clinton get credit for it? And how much credit? I don’t know. He will probably get a little more credit than people now expect. President Clinton did understand the way the world was changing . He talked a lot about it in his campaign and in his presidency. He did move his Democratic party to the center on those issues — free trade and the global economy. Even if there are so many other factors that are a part of the economic boon that a president has no control over, anyone who has studied the intricacy of that era knows how much Clinton paid attention to the economy and did follow and try to pave the way for what was happening. As historians look over the records of those years, I think that history will give him more credit. On the other side, what does the success of those who are profitings during this era mean to someone thirty years from now? That is a tougher question. It doesn’t matter to history what the economy was like in the 1920s before the collapse. It didn’t make those presidents great presidents. We don’t know what the future holds. But if in fact this is a long-term renaissance, Clinton will get a lot of credit for it.

He also had an enormous effect on changing politics. Here too is a great Clinton irony. He entered politics during what was essentially a long conservative trend in the nation. He came in a little before the Reagan era and had to deal with that for much of his time as governor. He came in to politics in a very conservative state. Even though it was democratic, Arkansas was quite conservative. He spent most of his time trying to figure out how someone with basically progressive instincts could survive and prevail in the culture of modern American politics. He figured it out and he figured it out before any other Democrat. That is why he became president in 1992. He taught the party how to do that and coopt Republicans on issues that they used to make Democrats basically superfluous or on the edge — from welfare and crime and punishment to the military, somewhat. Yet Clinton accomplished all of that during a period when he was the only Democrat thriving. During his presidency, the state houses went predominantly Republican. In 1994 he lost Congress and still has lost it. But he couldn’t transfer his power to his vice president, Al Gore. So now we have more Republicans in political office than we could have imagined before he took office.

But I also think he had an effect on the Republican party. There is always a double rebound in Bill Clinton. I think that George W. Bush learned a lot from Bill Clinton on how to move to the center and coopt the right wing of his party. So for those who are in the center, they should take some solace in that. And credit Bill Clinton in an ironic way for affecting George W. Bush.

I am not an expert on foreign policy so I always feel somewhat less comfortable dealing in that realm. I have studied Clinton on foreign policy; it is a somewhat mixed bag. He had none of the disasters that some of the people who tend to hate Clinton predicted in his adventures in the Balkans or in Haiti. No great successes also but no disasters. He tended to be fairly even keeled in times of crisis. It was something that I saw in him. Even when he tended to be irresponsible in other parts of his life, he tended not be irresponsible with the nation’s safety. The only time where I thought there was a glimpse of something irresponsible was during the Lewinski scandal. I always had questions about the timing of the bombings of the pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. But other than that, I can’t think of instances where he acted irresponsibly.

On the other hand, you would be hard put to define the Clinton foreign policy or to say that he established a philosophy, a line of thought or a line of action that describes the Clinton era of foreign policy. And I think that is a failing. He is so malleable in all of his dealing in life, but in foreign policy I think you need to be somewhat less malleable at least in your definitions if not in your actions.

So was the Clinton presidency reality or illusion? Both and at the same time. For that is Bill Clinton. I am reminded of one of those final moments in his presidency. Clinton described his last seconds in the oval office and how he left and turned around and came back again and left. The way he described it, Pedesta turned and said, "We did some good. We did a lot of good." And meantime, John Pedesta, privately is desperately trying to figure out all of these pardons that Clinton had done in the last day and why he pardoned Mark Rich and other ne’erdowells and is in this final whirlwind of the other side of Bill Clinton, which of course Bill Clinton did not mention in his final speech. But both of those are Bill Clinton.

I will close with two stories about Clinton and Al Gore that are kind of representative of these two men: virtually the same age, both from states in the middle south, both with tendencies toward moderate to progressive politics, both incredibly competitive, both very, very smart yet utterly different men and with different results. With Al Gore, I always tell the story of when he was at St. Albans and played football. He was the center on his team, like Gerry Ford, always getting pounded on the head, and the captain. He was a good football player. He started in his sophomore year and he was the center in a game against Episcopal High School in Northern Virginia, which had the best player in the area, a behemoth named Ty Ty Tyler, Chadwell Ty Ty Tyler. Tyler would sort of beat the heck out of the opposing center. Before every snap he would wind his right arm back behind his head and pound the guy in the helmet when the ball was snapped. He was doing this to Al Gore and it didn’t seem to having any effect. For the entire first half, Al Gore was steadily driving Ty Ty Tyler crazy. So Tyler started giving him rabbit punches after every tackle and kicking him. Finally, in the third quarter, Gore had enough and punched Tyler back. Al Gore got kicked out of the game. And in my mind, that is sort of Al Gore. He gets more votes that Bill Clinton ever got, by far. He gets 560,000 more votes than George W. Bush and Al Gore gets kicked out of the game.

With Bill Clinton, the story that I think most about in that realm is also in high school. He didn’t play football. He was the band major. Band in Hot Springs High School and in Arkansas was a big deal. It was probably bigger than football in someplaces -- and very competitive. The bands would go out and compete in performances against all of the other bands in the region and the state. Bill Clinton played saxophone. He was a band major and he was pretty good. As with everything else, he was very competitive in band. He organized his band like it was a political operation. He would figure out who would play against whom in what competition and how they could beat the next school. Early on in his final season of band, a new kid moved into the area and joined the band, a trumpet player I think. He was really good. And Clinton saw that this guy could help him win more competitions. But the new kid was also a real trouble maker. Eventually, he caused enough trouble that he got kicked out of class and suspended. So he could not compete in the next few band competitions. So on a Saturday morning Bill Clinton went over to the band teacher’s house, knocked on the door, was invited in and then persuaded the band teacher to give this kid another chance. He was a new kid, misunderstood, and really deserved another chance. Clinton later said, of course, that he was successful and the kid was put back on the band team. And later Clinton said that in this moment, those few hours with the band teacher, he was at once using all of his rhetorical skills, persuasive manner and empathy and all of that in a successful way. Perhaps even more than in his famous trip to Washington as a member of Boy’s Nation where he shook John Kennedy’s hand, it was the moment when he talked the band teacher into letting this troublemaker back on the band that convinced him what his life’s work would be. That has been his life’s work. Bill Clinton wakes up every morning and the first thing he does is forgive himself and then he forgives the rest of the world. Sometimes the rest of the world forgives him back. That is the legacy of Bill Clinton.