What biographer could possibly envy Michael Tomasky? As part of the American Presidents series edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died in 2007, and Sean Wilentz, Tomasky drew the assignment of squeezing the life and times of William Jefferson Clinton into a volume “compact enough for the busy reader,” as Schlesinger put it. This is an easy enough task, say, in the case of William Henry Harrison, who served for just one month before dying of pneumonia, considerately allowing his biographer in this series, Gail Collins, to focus on his far more eventful and boisterous campaign.
Clinton did not perish during his presidency, but as Tomasky aptly observes in “Bill Clinton,” “his most notable accomplishment was simply surviving.” Nothing underscores that feat better than the fact that Clinton was one of only two presidents to be impeached (he, like Andrew Johnson, was acquitted by the Senate).
Tomasky’s invaluable contribution is to remind us just how much Clinton did accomplish during his presidency — and how much achievements like Nafta and welfare reform depended on him slicing deals to attract enough Republican votes to offset Democratic opponents in Congress. Tomasky is especially strong on the economic anxieties of the Democratic voter that propelled Clinton to victory and remained a priority for him during his presidency, which, as Tomasky points out in his epilogue, makes it even more mystifying that Hillary Clinton failed to capitalize on those same anxieties in the 2016 presidential campaign, as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump did.
If Tomasky has a blind spot, it is his handling of Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He calls Clinton’s behavior “unfathomably irresponsible,” and details how the conservative media stoked the news. Yet in his argument that the furor was largely disproportionate to the relationship, Tomasky blames the “rages” of Howell Raines, then the Times editorial page editor, and several of the paper’s columnists for adding to the bonfire, neglecting to mention that The Times rejected impeachment as the punishment. As for Lewinsky, he never touches on how unfairly the press trashed her or on the alleged campaign by the Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal to besmirch her.
To be fair, Tomasky is not only trying to cram into 150 pages what dozens of other writers have covered in thousands, but he is also writing about a president of recent vintage who remains a polarizing figure and who has led a post-White House life filled with deeds both good and suspect (see the dealings of the Clinton Foundation). His legacy, unavoidably, was a subcurrent of his wife’s presidential campaign, starting with the reasonable assumption that Hillary Clinton would never have been the Democratic nominee in 2012 (or the close runner-up in 2008) if her husband had not been a popular 42nd president of the United States.
Tomasky makes no attempt to hide his 2016 presidential preference by noting that Trump’s victory brought the Clinton era to a “horrifying close.” He declines to expound on why Trump won, but that is only fair since the 45th president’s story awaits its own volume in this series. And if Tomasky’s task of compression was unenviable. . . .
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