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Bill Clinton In The White House
Random House Trade Paperbacks
October 2006
On Sale: October 10, 2006
560 pages
ISBN: 0375760849
EAN: 9780375760846
Paperback
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Non-Fiction
The definitive account of one of the most accomplished,
controversial, and polarizing figures in American
history
Bill Clinton is the most arresting leader of
his generation. He transformed American politics, and his
eight years as president spawned arguments that continue to
resonate. For all that has been written about this singular
personality–including Clinton’s own massive
autobiography–there has been no comprehensive, nonpartisan
overview of the Clinton presidency.
Few writers are
as qualified and equipped to tackle this vast subject as the
award-winning veteran Washington Post correspondent John F.
Harris, who covered Clinton for six of his eight years in
office–as long as any reporter for a major newspaper. In
The Survivor, Harris frames the historical debate
about President William Jefferson Clinton, by revealing the
inner workings of the Clinton White House and providing the
first objective analysis of Clinton’s leadership and its
consequences.
Harris shows Clinton entering the Oval
Office in 1993 primed to make history. But with the Cold War
recently concluded and the country coming off a nearly
uninterrupted generation of Republican presidents, the new
president’s entry into this maelstrom of events was
tumultuous. His troubles were exacerbated by the habits,
personal contacts, and the management style, he had
developed in his years as governor of Arkansas. Clinton’s
enthusiasm and temper were legendary, and he and Hillary
Rodham Clinton–whose ambitions and ordeals also fill these
pages–arrived filled with mistrust about many of the
characters who greeted them in the “permanent Washington”
that often holds the reins in the nation’s
capital.
Showing surprising doggedness and a deep-set
desire to govern from the middle, Clinton repeatedly rose to
the challenges; eventually winning over (or running over)
political adversaries on both sides of the aisle–sometimes
facing as much skepticism from fellow Democrats as from his
Republican foes. But as Harris shows in his accounts of
political debacles such as the attempted overhaul of health
care, Clinton’s frustrations in the war against terrorism,
and the numerous personal controversies that time and again
threatened to consume his presidency, Bill Clinton could
never manage to outrun his tendency to favor conciliation
over clarity, or his own destructive appetites.
The Survivor is the best kind of history, a
book filled with major revelations–the tense dynamic of the
Clinton inner circle and Clinton’s professional symbiosis
with Al Gore to the imprint of Clinton’s immense personality
on domestic and foreign affairs–as well as the minor details
that leaven all great political narratives. This
long-awaited synthesis of the dominant themes, events, and
personalities of the Clinton years will stand as the
authoritative and lasting work on the Clinton
Presidency.
From the Hardcover edition.
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