The President We Deserve: Bill Clinton: His Rise, Falls, and Comebacks

By Martin Walker

Book Overview

Martin Walker's critical biography of Bill Clinton focuses on the president as a classic figure of America's post-World War II meritocracy, a poor boy from the segregated old South who won scholarships to elite universities and became a lawyer fascinated by the process and the power of government.??Walker also unearths a private life that has resonated to the rhythmic clich?s of a country-and-western song:??Clinton's father died in a car wreck before he was born; his mother buried three husbands and married two more; his stepdaddy beat his mother and fired gunshots into the bedroom walls; one brother went to jail; and his own marriage tottered under the pain he admitted inflicting upon it.??This president's background is as grittily American as the woeful tales that wail from jukeboxes in bars across the land.??He is Bubba with brains, a redneck with a Rhodes scholarship--America at her most raw, and most cultivated.??And his first term has been unpredictable, volatile, and fascinating.??Martin Walker shows us the why, the how, and the future of the Clinton administration.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 051759871X
• ISBN13: 9780517598719
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Best of the Early Clinton Books

Even before Monica-gate, there were way too many Clinton books. Some of them magazine articles padded out to book length (Elizabeth Drew). Some with axes to grind and ponderous writing (like Bob Woodward). Some written by right wing nuts who have no idea how to write or conduct research. This book is great---written by someone who has perspective (it probably helps that he isn't an American), wit, and skill with words. It will make you think about Clinton about yourself in new ways.

A thoughtful review of an important presidency.

American conservative writers and talk-show hosts won't appreciate Martin Walker's non-partisan and "outsider" perspective on President Bill Clinton. While he recognizes Mr. Clinton's failings--some of the same failings that inflict so many members of the President's generation--Walker also illuminates a deeper significance to Mr. Clinton's leadership. This is seen not only in fiscal responsibility, such as the President's willingness to rebalance America's books after 12 years of deficit spending by Republicans in the White House. Nor does Walker restrict himself to finding significance in the President's support of the American middle-class over the nation's wealthy minority, or in his successful resistance of Draconian legislation proposed by the Republican-led Congress. No, Walker also recognizes a lasting "Clinton Doctrine": the President's emphasis on international trade, rather than international military force, as a means of obtaining peace in this world. This is an innovative tactic, and one of the many important things for which President Clinton is destined to be remembered. I look forward to Walker's full assessment of the Clinton administration after 2001.