Clinton banished to couch after affair disclosure

In memoir, former president reveals ’darkest part of inner life’

By John F. Harris / The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton says his admission to Hillary Rodham Clinton that he carried on an extramarital affair with former intern Monica Lewinsky left him banished to a White House couch for two months, but also prompted a season of self-examination and counseling that ultimately strengthened his marriage and gave him greater awareness into the origins of his self-destructive behavior.

In “My Life,” the former president’s long-awaited memoir, Clinton says the affair revealed “the darkest part of my inner life,” which he believes had its roots in a turbulent upbringing, in a family beset by domestic violence, which left him with feelings of shame and a predeliction for secrecy, according to advisers who have read the book.

Clinton’s publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, had hoped to keep details of the book closeted until its official release at 12 a.m. Tuesday, but the Associated Press Friday obtained a copy and began reporting details.

Among them was Clinton’s recollection of warning President Bush during the post-election transition that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network were the biggest threats to national security, but that Bush said little before changing the subject.

Clinton also returns in the book to a decade-old decision whose consequences shadowed his entire presidency. That was his acquiesence to demands from in Congress and the media that he request then-Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint a special counsel to investigate controversies stemming from his involvement in the Whitewater land deal. Despite vigorous warnings from his wife, he went ahead and made the request — a move that through a long and convoluted trail of events ultimately led to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr investigating his relationship with Lewinsky and whether Clinton lied under oath about it.

Clinton attributes this January 1994 misjudgment to fatigue and grief over the death of his mother, Virginia Kelley. Most of his mistakes in the presidency and life generally, Clinton says, can be traced to moments when he was feeling tired, or angry, according to the Associated Press account. In the case of Whitewater, he wishes he had instead acceded to news media requests, including from The Washington Post, that he voluntarily disclose his and the first lady’s records on the Whitewater controversy — but resist the appointment of an outside investigator with an open-ended mandate.

These relevations do not fundamentally reshape understanding of the Clinton presidency or even understanding about Clinton’s attitudes about what happened to him during those tumultuous eight years. Even while president, usually at fundraisers and other evening events when he was in a looser and more contemplative mood, Clinton spoke regularly about his battles to overcome grievance and resentment, and to maintain a balance between “light forces (and) dark forces in our psyche and our makeup and the way we look at the world,” as he put it in 1999.

As for the Lewinsky confession, his account echoes the one his wife, now the junior senator from New York, gave last year in her own memoir, “Living History.” She said both she and the Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, were often barely speaking to the president in the late summer and fall of 1998, and that she considered divorce but ultimately sought to repair the marriage, including with counseling.

Still, Clinton’s book promises to be the most definitive account of a question that has haunted admirers and opponents alike: Why would a leader of prodigious talents and energy imperil his presidency with a sordid relationship with a star-struck 21-year-old office worker? By giving an answer to this, Clinton and his confidants hope public attention will then pivot to other parts of the 957-page book. He intends it as a framing of his historical legacy and what he contends was his success in creating a robust economy and social progress at home and cooperative relationships overseas.

For now, however, Clinton and Knopf prefer that these details remain sealed for a few more days. Presidential lawyer Robert Barnett, visiting London, said, “It is terribly unfortunate that the Associated Press has again decided to breach a clear and unambiguous embargo. There are strong legal consequences to such actions, and the president’s publisher has put the AP on notice of that fact.”

Knopf paid Clinton a reported $10 millon advance, a record. The accompanying publicity bonanza may well set records as well. On Sunday, Time magazine is set to publish excerpts, and that evening CBS’s “60 Minutes” will devote its full hour to a Clinton interview.

On Friday, the audio division of Random House released the first of five sound snippets from “My Life,” which is read on tape and CD by the author. The newsbites are being doled out, one a day, to Infinity Broadcasting and America Online.

In the first audio-morsel, Clinton recalls his caught-on-camera meeting with President John F. Kennedy. “It was during this summer with Boys Nation that I first visited Washington. On Wednesday, July 24, we went to the White House to meet the president in the Rose Garden,” Clinton says. “After accepting a Boys Nation T-shirt, Kennedy walked down the steps and began shaking hands. I was in the front, and being bigger and a bigger supporter of the president’s than most of the others, I made sure I’d get to shake his hand even if he shook only two or three. It was an amazing moment for me.”

The second excerpt will be released Saturday, as part of the publisher’s concerted marketing effort. In the clip, Clinton speaks of watching Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on television in 1963. “I started crying during the speech and wept for a good while after Dr. King finished. He had said everything I believed, far better than I ever could. More than anything I ever experienced, except perhaps the power of my grandfather’s example, that speech steeled my determination to do whatever I could for the rest of my life to make Martin Luther King’s dream come true.”

Staff writer Linton Weeks contributed to this report.

http://www.detnews.com/2004/politics/0406/19/politics-188428.htm