THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503030353
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
FIRST IN HIS CLASS
A Biography of Bill Clinton
DAVID MARANISS
Simon & Schuster. 512 pp. $25.
HIS MOTHER WAS a nurse who liked to play the ponies. If his father hadn't died in an accident, he might have been jailed for bigamy. His first stepfather was an alcoholic and his second an ex-con. Yet Bill Clinton ended up the first baby boomer to become president. Washington Post reporter David Maraniss won a Pulitzer Prize for profiles of candidate Clinton. Now he offers a biography.
The book contains a few juicy tidbits, including the now well-known 1988 scene with longtime aide Betsey Wright, who went through a list of women Clinton had allegedly consorted with. He was asked which womanizing rumors were true and which women would talk. He decided to postpone a presidential campaign until daughter Chelsea was older.
On the other side of the ledger, pot-smoking Oxford University friends corroborate Clinton's claim that he didn't inhale. They claim he lacked the knack and invariably ended with his head out the window trying to avoid the smoke. And that's about it on the prurient interest front.
Those seeking tabloid details may be disappointed in First in His Class. But those trying to understand Bill and Hillary Clinton will find much to admire in this book. Maraniss is especially good at giving a feel for the places that shaped these two political animals:
The raffish Hot Springs of Clinton's youth, where he was the pampered favorite of strong women - mother, grandmother, principal.
Georgetown University, an elite enclave largely cut off from the campus strife of the 1960s.
Hillary's Park Ridge suburb of Chicago, where staunch Republicans raised a high-achieving Goldwater girl who surprised them by embracing a stern Methodist version of feminism and opposing the war in Vietnam.
Yale Law School of the early '70s, where academic rigor took a back seat to community activism.
The Clinton who emerges in these pages is a boy of unlimited charm and undeniable cleverness; but his essential character trait is a huge appetite for life. He trains himself to sleep five hours a night only to wind up an insomniac. He is tirelessly willing to shake another hand, make another campaign stop, but he's never on time as a result. He's prepared to trade ideas and explore options forever, but he has a hard time making an actual decision.
Maraniss mercifully goes light on the dime-store psychologizing, but clearly the death of Clinton's father before he was born had a profound effect. Carpe diem became his motto. And there may also be something to the view that growing up with an unpredictable alcoholic encouraged Clinton to play the compromiser, trying to please everyone.
The Clinton caricature painted by his opponents is not really in evidence, however. Despite some allegations, crude Bob Packwood-like lunges at women are not Clinton's style. He has been as often the pursued as the pursuer, and his attraction seems to have been a willingness actually to listen to women.
Maraniss also suggests there's less to Whitewater than meets the eye, at least as far as Clinton is concerned. He is indifferent to possessions and oblivious to money, except for campaign finances. He did try to avoid the draft, but could have done so far more easily if he hadn't agonized about the issue. He later obscured the facts, partly for fear of political fallout but also out of shame at not having gone.
Far from being a campus radical at Georgetown, Oxford and Yale, Clinton was regarded as a defender of the establishment, a believer in working within the system. A politician, not a protester.
In school and in Arkansas, Clinton displayed the same traits he has in Washington. He was disorganized and enthusiastic. He tried to pass his courses and his legislation by cramming at the last minute rather than by methodical work. He was more interested in campaigning than in governing.
The more enigmatic figure is Hillary Clinton. Clinton loves politics and pursues it single-mindedly. Hillary may be equally driven, but is more conflicted. According to Maraniss, she wants to do good, but she also wants to do well. She is miffed when it's considered impolitic to install a swimming pool at the governor's mansion, asking why they can't live like other people.
Clinton says she's the only woman he can imagine growing old with because he admires her brains. She envies his raw political talent and would like to have his leadership gift but often puts people off. In marrying him, she seems to have taken on his case and become his in-house counsel. Both breadwinner and adviser, she tries to protect him from himself and defend him against enemies. During one Arkansas campaign, she went so far as to attend an opponent's rally and heckle him.
We learn that she enjoys ``sparring'' with him, which is a euphemism for shouting matches that astonish and embarrass bystanders. She puts up with his philandering, and he puts up with her. Perhaps all marriages are of odd couples, but this is a really odd one that Maraniss never fully explains.
Still, First in His Class is the best available portrait of the Clintons. It ends when Clinton enters the presidential race in 1992. His life is obviously a work in progress. Presumably Maraniss is gathering material for volume two. MEMO: Keith Monroe is a staff editorial writer. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff file
by CNB