Posted on 04/12/2004 8:25:44 PM PDT by RWR8189
WASHINGTON, April 12 — As Bill Clinton seeks to finish his memoirs, leading Democrats are voicing concern that the book could overshadow Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign, diverting attention to Mr. Clinton's outsize legacy of scandal and achievement.
Many Democrats said they wanted the book published as far as possible before the election and, certainly, before the Democratic National Convention in late July. They fear that the book will embolden Mr. Clinton's foes to turn out and vote for President Bush.
Mr. Clinton, for his part, has increased the nervous speculation about the book in Democratic circles by making a habit of picking up the phone to regale friends with long passages and even chapters of his prose. Mixing boyish enthusiasm with a craving for approval, people who have received the calls said, he has proudly narrated excerpts about everything from college antics with his pals at Georgetown to his 1995 standoff with Republicans that led to a government shutdown.
Some of Mr. Clinton's friends say he should hurry up.
"It'll get a lot of air space and I think it's kind of imperative that happen in front of the convention," said John D. Podesta, a chief of staff in Mr. Clinton's White House. That way, he said, "Kerry's benefited by having a clear shot, clear air space, from the convention through November."
A close associate of Mr. Kerry, offering a personal opinion, said: "If it comes out any time before the election, it's not particularly good for us because he takes up a lot of oxygen. It's less that he's a negative and more that he'll be out on his book tour and he'll be the story of the week rather than John Kerry."
Mr. Clinton, who has been working on the book for two years, has promised the Democratic Party's chairman, Terry McAuliffe, that it will be released well before the convention's opening day, July 26, party officials said. Officials said they believed that the book and a nationwide tour could even serve as a boost for Democrats across the nation, as long as it happened before July 26.
Mr. Clinton's painstaking pace is also increasingly frustrating his publisher, which gave him a record advance of more than $10 million and had originally planned to release the book last year.
Executives at Mr. Clinton's publisher, the Knopf division of Random House, have discussed releasing the book before June 15, but now that looks like a long shot, executives at the company said. Publishers say it takes at least six weeks to produce and distribute a serious book of this length. Knopf is preparing to do just that, people involved said, but publishing before June 15 means that Mr. Clinton needs to finish writing by the end of this month.
Publishers are typically loath to release major works of newsworthy nonfiction either during the slow summer months of July and August, when the television audience greatly declines and many people are on vacation, or during the close of the presidential campaign, when the election will dominate the headlines.
But Mr. Clinton is still hard at work, writing longhand at his home in Chappaqua, N.Y. People involved with the book said that to expedite the process, Mr. Clinton was turning in parts of the work to his editor, Robert Gottlieb, but it is still unclear when he will be done. Some friends contended that he could still pull it together in time for a June publication, arguing that Mr. Clinton is at his best under pressure. But others noted that he was an inveterate procrastinator who was late for everything and often missed deadlines, a fiddler who revised even routine policy speeches until he was about to deliver them.
"I wouldn't bet on it coming out during the campaign," said Dick Morris, who worked as Mr. Clinton's chief campaign strategist. "He takes a long time to finish things and he's never happy, and he fills up the wastebasket."
"What I really believe is if he were to come out with it during the campaign it would be intended as a way of undercutting Kerry," he added. "It would turn the whole election into a debate about Clinton rather than Kerry."
A half-dozen people who have heard or read passages of Mr. Clinton's draft said that he had taken a very comprehensive approach to his life, with abundant details of his humble roots in Arkansas, when he famously defended his mother from his alcoholic stepfather. At other points he recalls casual conversations at a gas station and at a barbecue restaurant that helped him decide to run again for governor of Arkansas after getting voted out of office. (People at both places told him voters would accept that he had done penance for the sins of his first administration.) Several of his listeners said he usually read to them passages about his life before the White House, and many declined to disclose specific details. But several people who have discussed the book with him say they believe it could end up at as many as 800 pages.
Robert Barnett, the lawyer who represented both Mr. Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, in their book deals, said only: "The president is aiming to publish in mid-2004. We will announce all the details when the time is right, and in the meantime we hope people will build up anticipation."
Paul Bogaards, Knopf spokesman, acknowledged that Mr. Clinton was still writing but predicted his book would succeed in any season. "This book is going to create store traffic whenever it is published," he said. "Our aim has always been to accelerate publication upon delivery."
Its political impact is another story. People who have heard passages are quiet when it comes to the most sensational anticipated subject in the book, his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky, though one associate confirmed that he did address it. In Mrs. Clinton's book "Living History," she suggests that her husband's motives are for him to tell.
Yet Ms. Lewinsky is just one of a number of characters from the Clinton days whom gossipmongers in Washington are eager to read about from Mr. Clinton's perspective. There is George Stephanopoulos, the onetime confidant who dissected his former boss in a book of his own. (He had no comment.) Mr. Morris, who has made a career out of criticizing his former boss, might come in for some criticism himself. (He said he did not expect to.) And who could leave out Mr. Clinton's onetime adversary Newt Gingrich? (He declined to comment.)
But Leon E. Panetta, who was also a chief of staff for Mr. Clinton, said the former president had read him passages about the 1995 budget standoff with the Republicans, then led by Mr. Gingrich, to double-check facts. "I really think he does it pretty fairly," he said. "Probably more fairly than I would have."
Mr. Gingrich receives a respectful treatment, one person acquainted with some of the book's contents said. Another person close to Mr. Clinton said he took a sympathetic approach to his successor's handling of terrorism and Iraq.
Douglas Sosnik, Mr. Clinton's political director in 1996 who has read parts of the book, said: "This guy would be better off if he did settle a few scores. He's too easy on people."
Some people who have talked to Mr. Clinton suggest he may be more candid than cynics expect, noting his considerable admiration for his mother's memoir, "Leading With My Heart." In her book, his mother, Virginia Kelley, told an unvarnished story of her own sometimes tawdry life, including her fondness for gambling, drinking and fast times, and she disparaged her daughter-in-law as a styleless feminist. Her ghostwriter, James Morgan, has said that when Mr. Clinton reviewed the manuscript he did not seek to redact a word, pronouncing it just like his mother, and Mr. Clinton has told friends he seeks to emulate it.
That is unlikely to calm Democrats who worry that Mr. Clinton might turn off voters squeamish about moral issues. The New York Observer recently likened his anticipated book tour to "Elvis Presley's 1968 NBC comeback special."
But some party leaders and Kerry campaign officials argue that publication in the spring could, in the words of one, help in "pumping up the base." If Mr. Clinton gets it out in time, party officials said, they hoped to hold fund-raising events at stops on his book tour.
"The notion that once upon a time there was a president who actually thought about how you strengthen the middle class and did a good job steering the economy is not a bad thing," Mr. Podesta said. "It's a good thing."
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who is close to Mr. Clinton, said his fellow Democrats should relax.
"We should stop being so morose about Clinton," he said. "He's a plus."
Jim Rutenberg reported from Washington for this article, and David D. Kirkpatrick from New York.
I've heard differently.
what an apt description of xxxlinton ... my prediction is that his piece of garbage will land atop the nytimeslist for a couple weeks then be used for squashing bugs and propping up tables with short legs .. to misquote Shakespeare, his book will be a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The jokes pretty much write themselves, don't they?
That's an awful thing to say about that woman . . . Miss Lewinsky.
What achievement?
Like nabbing Bin Laden for instance . . . he never did get around to it.
you know, you bring these things on yourself...
as Dan the Rather would say: Courage!
Typo. Should read: "writhing longhand at his home."
Did you really mean to say that?
It appears that Virginia Kelley was capable of understatement...
Could be less generous and include the 'first timers'; but how about All those that voted for his return to the Oval Office, the second time.
Darn typos. "He's a pus."
This Clinton book (his) may cause the defeat of John Kerry. And then in 2008 he may cause Hillary! to lose as well. Those three defeats would be a fitting legacy for a man of such towering dishonesty and egotism.
Congressman Billybob
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