POTUS SPEAKS: Finding the Words that Defined the Clinton Presidency.

• Author: KAUS, MICKEY
• Position: Review

POTUS SPEAKS: Finding the Words that Defined the Clinton Presidency by Michael Waldman Simon & Schuster, $25.00

Clintonese

Clinton's new language for the presidency

THERE ARE AT LEAST TWO REASONS to approach Michael Waldman's memoir of the Clinton White House with lowered expectations. Waldman wasn't a key policy adviser. He was speechwriter to a president allergic to interesting language. Nor does the Clinton presidency have an especially compelling story arc, despite all the scandal and impeachment Basically, Clinton lost control of Congress after two years, and much of the rest of his presidency has consisted of a long, tedious comeback. His second term has not featured major legislative triumphs or even dramatic failures.

But Waldman has written a rich, honest, funny memoir, one that I think succeeds in its stated goal of accurately capturing the flavor of Clinton's terms, at least a large part (the good part) of that flavor. In part that's because Waldman has no particular axes to grind--he's not a big enough cheese to have a reputation to defend, he wasn't involved in a scandal, wasn't fired, doesn't have scores to settle. He's not even embittered. He came to Clinton's campaign from the Naderite left, and, as he puts it, "I didn't fall in love at first, only to feel betrayed and disillusioned later. Instead, exposed to [Clinton] over many years, I grew steadily more impressed."

Waldman isn't his book's hero; he wanders through Clinton's terms as an amused, self-effacing idealist, plugging unsuccessfully for campaign finance reform, dutifully defending a trade agreement he had previously fought against, ultimately doing his part to help Clinton make the transition to what Waldman claims is a "new kind of presidency," dependent "more than ever before on the bully pulpit," on a steady stream of speeches, events, and executive actions rather than big campaigns for big legislation in the New Deal/Great Society manner.

He seems to have had fun, or maybe he just cut the boring parts. He goes home in a huff one day and Clinton winds up delivering the pre-fact-checked draft of a major NAFTA address, with Presidents Ford, Carter, and Bush in attendance. Clinton's "eyes bulged briefly as he realized something was amiss," then he ad libbed off a text filled with hideous errors, Panicked, Waldman finds then-adviser David Gergen in the crowd, who shrugs and correctly advises "Don't worry about it." Few notice. In 1996, Waldman accompanies Clinton to an environmental event, at which the president dramatically releases a no-longer-endangered...