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Bill Clinton's America.

Article Excerpt
Bill Clinton My Life Hutchinson, 2004

Bill Clinton's autobiography, My Life, helps explain an extraordinary individual and career, so often underestimated, and someone whose ideals have often fallen short in practice despite his best efforts. A critical reading of Clinton's book gives new insights into why the United States today is on the brink of destroying its democratic foundations under the Bush administration, even though this was not Clinton's intent. It tells far less about the foundation for overt imperial intervention that has characterised US foreign policy in virtually every part of the world since September 11, 2001. Perhaps most importantly, through this book we can get a better sense of the dramatic differences between Clinton's leadership qualities under his neoliberal but culturally democratic regime and George W. Bush's abdication of leadership under the Republican extreme right that can be characterised as pre-fascist.

My Life has had a strange reception in the United States, Britain and Australia. The book has been a huge popular success since its release in July, but most US and British reviewers have savaged it as badly edited, self-serving and a 'data dump'. Not so in Australia, where Clinton's memoirs have been well received by media personalities such as Andrew Denton in his interview with Clinton on Enough Rope and Jill Kitson on ABC Radio National's Booktalk.

Why have many of the critics been so harsh--at least outside Australia? In part, the book does have serious weaknesses. Clinton's massive tome of 957 pages is just 150 pages short of the English translation of War and Peace. The book's real title should be My Diary, given the way it rambles from one scene to another, often without any transition. It has no chapter titles. Each chapter is organised chronologically,...

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