Locked in the Cabinet.

• Author: DeLong, James V.

This is an odd and irritating book. On the surface, it is a tale of an academic, author, and Friend of Bill of 25 years, reluctantly persuaded to become secretary of labor. His motives are pure: using power to help close the widening income gap between skilled and unskilled workers; to raise government investment in human capital by funding education and training; and, in general, to aid the people at the bottom of society.

As happens when the pure of heart meet the realities of power in D.C., the dream goes awry. Reich portrays himself as a naif about government who loses crucial battles to economic trolls worried about the budget deficit and inflation. He winds up so far out of the loop that he hangs out in the White House parking lot to beg scraps of information from passing officials. Final defeat comes at the hands of Dick Morris, who seduces a once-pure president into adopting the themes of the cold-hearted Republicans and focusing on the suburban vote while ignoring the economic anxieties of lower-class America. In the end, despite his love for the job, the protagonist is unwilling to sacrifice time with his family to carry the crushing workload of a cabinet officer and to engage in more losing battles, and he disembarks from the ship of state to return to academia.

The book is in the form of a journal, with entries for specific dates scattered throughout the four years of the first Clinton term. The entries grow steadily farther apart, and are pretty skimpy for 1995 and 1996. Many bear the mark of heavy reworking in hindsight, making the book a fragmentary memoir illuminated by notes made at the time rather than a real diary.

The book is also redolent of literary forms beyond the memoir. It is a bit of a Bildungsroman, a somewhat sappy coming-of-age novel wherein a naive youth grows into an adult. Or it can be read as a picaresque novel, recounting the tale of a young, slightly roguish hero who goes out into the world, meets wonders and adventures, and makes faux-naive but actually shrewd comments on his experience.

The roman a clef, that form in which real events and people are fictionalized a la Primary Colors, also comes to mind. Lots of scores are settled. Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO comes through as burnt-out and inept, and a social snob to boot. Newt Gingrich has "the meanness of a nasty little kid." In fact, all Republicans are pretty rotten. Bridgestone Tire, which out-PRed Reich over an OSHA rule, is strung up to twist in...