Bill Clinton's Exit Interviews.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick

The outgoing president enters his final spin cycle.

One of the great, though largely unacknowledged, benefits of Campaign 2000's bizarre, attenuated endgame is that it has soaked up time that would have otherwise been given over to media summations of Bill Clinton's presidential legacy.

Given an ordinary election, the weeks between November 7 and the inauguration would have been filled with mostly nostalgic appraisals of the Man from Hope's tenure as the nation's chief executive. (It is one of the sad truths of American journalism that the press almost inevitably goes soft whenever a major figure, however controversial or reviled, exits the public stage or dies; indeed, we can only await the reverential encomia that Sens. Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms will receive when they finally shuffle off their mortal coils.) Instead, we have had mostly silence on the topic.

Whether the contested election has cancelled or merely pushed this discussion back a few months remains to be seen, but at least one partisan has been doing his best to make sure that the Clinton legacy is understood in its fullest, most nuanced glory. That person is, unsurprisingly, none other than Bill Clinton himself. His early efforts leave something to be desired, especially when it comes to the public humility, however self-evidently phony, that Americans esteem in their leaders. For instance, we've learned recently that Clinton only grudgingly accepted a constitutionally mandated retirement, musing that "maybe they should limit it to two 'consecutive' terms" and that he thinks he would have easily won a third White House race given the opportunity and the current competition. Such braggadocio, even when it's accurate, is not exactly the quickest way to win hearts and minds.

Clinton, a master tactician, realizes that burnishing his reputation will require the sort of permanent campaign he brought to his eight years in the Oval Office. (Luckily for him, as the empty-nest spouse of a freshman senator he'll have plenty of time on his hands. Then again, given the diversions he pursued even while maintaining a full schedule as president, idle hours may be his most serious challenge yet.)

Such understanding may explain his renewed public affection for the sage of San Clemente, Richard Nixon, who Clinton says once counseled him that "a lot of life is just hanging on." Notes Clinton of the man who conducted secret wars and cover-ups, "He... lived what I thought was a fundamentally...