A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him
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A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him
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Overview
“An astonishing collection of 171 interviews with Clinton’s friends, foes, admirers, and detractors as well as reporters and political analysts.”—Booklist (starred review).
Though Bill Clinton has been out of office since 2001, public fascination with him continues unabated. Many books about Clinton have been published in recent years, but shockingly, no single-volume biography covers the full scope of Clinton’s life from the cradle to the present day, not even Clinton’s own account, My Life. More troubling still, books on Clinton have tended to be highly polarized, casting the former president in an overly positive or negative light.
In this, the first complete oral history of Clinton’s life, historian Michael Takiff presents the first truly balanced book on one of our nation’s most controversial and fascinating presidents. Through more than 150 chronologically arranged interviews with key figures—including Bob Dole, James Carville, and Tom Brokaw, among many others—A Complicated Man goes far beyond the well-worn party-line territory to capture the larger-than-life essence of Clinton the man. With the tremendous attention given to the Lewinsky scandal, it is easy to overlook the president’s humble upbringing, as well as his many achievements at home and abroad: the longest economic boom in American history, a balanced budget, successful intervention in the Balkans, and a series of landmark, if controversial, free-trade agreements. Through the candid recollections of Takiff’s many subjects, A Complicated Man leaves no area unexplored, revealing the most complete and unexpected portrait of our forty-second president published to date.
“Packed with fascinating personal perspective and testimony.”—Nigel Hamilton, bestselling and award-winning author of American Caesars
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300168884 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/11/2020 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 493 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Complicated Man
The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him
By Michael Takiff
Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2010 Michael TakiffAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-16888-4
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Small Town Boy: Hope, Arkansas
"He was supposed to come back and get her."
On the morning of May 18, 1946, Marie Baker and Maxie Fuller were on duty at the Southwestern Bell switchboard on Second Street in Hope, Arkansas, population 7,475. Both women were cousins of Virginia Cassidy Blythe, the twenty-two-year-old wartime bride of William Jefferson Blythe Jr., a salesman she had met three years earlier in Shreveport, Louisiana, where she was studying nursing.
Marie Baker: I answered what was an inward, public signal. This operator told me, "We want the Eldridge Cassidy residence in Hope. We have an emergency for it." I turned around to Maxie and I said, "Oh, my lord, Maxie, something has happened. I'm getting an emergency call for the Eldridge Cassidy family." The cop—I guess it was the cop on the other end, in Missouri—said, "It's a death message."
Bill Blythe had set out the previous afternoon from Chicago, where, just out of the army, he had landed a job selling heavy equipment. He'd intended to drive all night to Hope to pick up his pregnant wife and bring her back up north. But three miles outside of Sikeston, Missouri, a front tire blew out, and the Buick spun out of control. Rescuers searched for the driver for two hours before finding him in a drainage ditch. He had escaped the overturned car only to drown in three feet of water.
Marie Baker: We knew it was Virginia's husband because we knew that he was supposed to come back and get her.
On August 19, fatherless, William Jefferson Blythe III was born. Later he would be called Bill Clinton.
"Laughing, happy, precious."
Margaret Polk was a distant cousin to Virginia, Bill's mother. Conrad Grisham and Myra Reese were first cousins to Virginia—their father and Virginia's mother, Edith Grisham Cassidy, were brother and sister. Like all three, Hugh Reese, Myra's husband, was a longtime resident of Hope. Grisham and Hugh Reese are now deceased.
Margaret Polk: You could tell Clinton was going to be something from the time he was born. The Lord just cut him out to be something.
Conrad Grisham: Virginia went to school not long after Bill was born. That's the reason her mother, Aunt Edith, raised him for his first few years. Aunt Edith loved Bill like her own child. "Eat, Billy, eat now, eat," she'd say, with him in the high chair. It's a wonder he hadn't been overweight more than he was those first few years, because she believed in children having plenty to eat.
Just after Bill turned one, his mother left for New Orleans, where for two years she would study to be a nurse-anesthetist. She returned when she could, but while she was gone she left her son in the care of her parents, Edith and Eldridge Cassidy, whom Bill knew as Mammaw and Papaw.
Myra Reese: Aunt Edith took the responsibility of teaching him. I'd be there at mealtime. As he was eating she was showing him flashcards—ABCs and s. In the living room of that old house was a coffee table and that's where they had their study time. She had it filled with kindergarten books and preschool books. She had him reading when he was three.
He was never hard as a child. Aunt Edith would say that he had just as soon play with a powder can and a spoon as to have a new rattler. He didn't demand things.
Margaret Polk: Laughing, happy, precious, and the best thing!
Myra Reese: Aunt Edith drove this huge Buick. On Saturday she would drop the two of us o at the movie theater. That was about the extent of the entertainment in Hope, especially for that age child—he must have been six. I babysat him for the Saturday Westerns.
Myra Reese is seven years Bill's senior.
That let Aunt Edith go do her shopping. We would stay there for hours. It was no problem. He was a very well-behaved child.
The theater isn't here anymore. It was called the Saenger.
Hugh Reese: It was in downtown Hope on Second Street, near the Frisco Railroad. It was a very elaborate theater, real fancy, with a balcony. The balcony was for so-called "colored people."
* * *
George Wright Jr. was Bill's contemporary in Hope.
George Wright Jr.: All physicians' offices had a white waiting room and a colored waiting room. And that's what they had on the door. All restaurants had a colored section and a white section.
Hugh Reese: We had a black high school, grade school, grammar school. We had a white high school, grade school, grammar school. All the churches: white Methodist, black Methodist; white Baptist, black Baptist.
George Wright Jr.: That's just the way we grew up in the small-town South. They had their section and we had our section. We never did mix that much.
Hugh Reese: Hope was typical. We were just like 99 percent of the other southern towns.
Raised on a farm, with only a fifth-grade education, James Eldridge Cassidy, Bill's grandfather, made deliveries for Southern Ice.
Hugh Reese: Eldridge had been an ice man before Bill was born. Then he got the grocery store.
Tom Purvis: Back at that time there were quite a few iceboxes in town—not electric refrigerators, iceboxes—and he delivered ice.
Tom Purvis, a few years older than Virginia, moved to Hope in 1941. Mary Nell Turner, around the same age as Purvis, was born in Hope.
Mary Nell Turner: Icebox—open the door and put the ice in.
Hugh Reese: An outgoing, friendly, sociable guy. Gregarious. Billy inherits some of his charisma from his Grandpa Eldridge, I'm sure.
Margaret Polk: He was a ladies' man. He had another man on the ice route with him and he would send him on ahead, away from his girlfriend's house.
Myra Reese: As grocery stores go today, his was very small. He had a wood-burning stove in it. And a couple or three chairs sitting around, so that people did go in and gather and talk.
He bootlegged out of that store.
Hempstead County had gone dry in 1944.
That brought in a little extra income and attention.
Marie Baker: Virginia said he had something in the bottom of the apple barrel. Everybody in Hope knew that.
Margaret Polk: Another thing I want to tell. Edith bootlegged. She did, because we bought whiskey from her. Right out of that house!
Hugh Reese: North Hazel Street, where Eldridge had his store, was black. He had primarily black trade. Eldridge was very popular with the blacks. He didn't make any dierence between a black man and a white man as far as coming in to do business with him. I'm sure Bill was influenced by that.
Joe Purvis: His grandfather treated everybody just the same.
Joe Purvis, Tom's son, attended kindergarten with Bill.
I don't think that was unusual in itself. I think the thing that made it unusual for Bill was that his dad was not around. I don't remember anybody else who was divorced or without two parents at that time. I'm sure Mr. Cassidy had an undue influence on Bill since he was the only male adult in his life for a while.
Decades later, Bill would still point to the lesson he learned from his grandfather, "an uneducated rural southerner without a racist bone in his body."
An imposing, heavyset woman, Edith Cassidy, Bill's grandmother, worked as a private-duty nurse. Whereas Eldridge was likable and easygoing, Edith was competent and industrious—and not content with the modest income her husband brought home.
Myra Reese: Aunt Edith and Uncle Eldridge would have their spats. Heated arguments. Eldridge drank quite a bit, and Aunt Edith didn't, and she didn't approve of that. Aunt Edith was a very, very opinionated person. Everything had to go her way or no way. He was a meek man.
Margaret Polk: She had hellfire in her, but she was a good woman. Eldridge was just as humble as a poor little kitten. She just bossed him like he was her little boy, but he didn't seem to mind. He'd go along with everything she said and wanted him to do. Now, I wouldn't say they were mean, she and Virginia, but they had a streak of hell in them.
Hugh Reese: Edith was the most prominent nurse in town. Really talented as far as the medical aspects of it, and then a great bedside manner. She would come in, pat you on the back, and say, "You're looking great this morning. You're improving wonderfully."
Joe Purvis: A lot of the nurses back then would wear nurses' outfits, and they'd wear these capes. A cape added an air of mystery to a lady, like somebody you'd see in one of the serials on Saturday at the "picture show," as we called it. I have memories of her picking Bill up at kindergarten with that kind of a cape on.
Kindergarten was held at Miss Marie Purkins' School for Little Folks.
There were two sisters who owned the kindergarten: the Purkins sisters, both of whom were old maids.
The kindergarten was in their backyard. It was built like a small schoolhouse, with a bell that you would ring. There was one big open room. There were probably anywhere from thirty to fifty kids in that school at any one time. There was no public kindergarten then.
Bill very much was a good guy. I remember on several occasions different folks would get into it, and before an actual fistfight would break out Bill would be brokering the peace, saying, "You guys don't want to be mad at each other." He was a peacemaker.
He's always had some amazing abilities.
"Had a tremendous warm smile."
Conrad Grisham: Virginia had her mind on the future, even in high school. She had her mind on that nursing degree and went to Louisiana to school. She finally went to school enough that she was a registered anesthetist. That was her trade in the nursing business.
Margaret Polk: They worked at the same hospital—Virginia worked days and Edith worked nights.
Virginia and her son still lived with her parents in their two-and-a-half-story house on Hervey Street. With the two women of the house working, the child of the house needed another caregiver.
Donna Taylor Wingfield: Of course, both Billy and I had black nannies.
Donna Taylor Wingfield was also a classmate of Bill's at Miss Marie's.
Margaret Polk: That old colored woman would work for them, to stay over here in the morning after Virginia went to work, about six-thirty or seven until about eleven-thirty or noon.
Conrad Grisham: Virginia was really easygoing. I never saw her get mad.
Joe Purvis: Virginia was always a laughing and fun-loving lady. Had a tremendous warm smile. In fact, in every memory I have of Virginia from growing up she was smiling.
On the other hand ...
Margaret Polk: You better not cross her, because she'd be as mean as hell. She'd cuss you out.
Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty III attended kindergarten with Bill. He would be Bill's first White House chief of staff.
Mack McLarty: She was a truly loving and caring mother.
Margaret Polk: She smoked and drank. But she was a good nurse.
"Roger had bought her a lot of pretty clothes."
A frequent visitor to Eldridge Cassidy's grocery store—a man who supplied some of the liquor sold under Papaw's counter—was a car dealer who had moved to Hope from Hot Springs.
Hugh Reese: Physically, Roger Clinton was of real short stature. And real nice looking. Dark curly hair. Well dressed all the time. What we'd call a high roller in his gambling. He liked to party.
His brother Raymond owned the largest Buick distributorship in Arkansas, in Hot Springs. The Buick distributorship here came open for sale, and Roger got word of it through the GM grapevine. And came and bought it. That's why he came from Hot Springs to Hope. He was very successful here in that business.
Car dealerships were highly profitable, and you drove a new car yourself all the time. Your salesmen drove a new car. It was a very lucrative business. Especially GM.
The father of Donna Taylor Wingfield worked for Clinton Buick in Hope.
Donna Taylor Wingfield: It was a good dealership, a good business—made us all a good living. We weren't rich, but we weren't poor.
Hugh Reese: Not many Arkansans had a Cadillac in those days. Buicks were high up on the hog.
Even after discovering another woman's lingerie in Roger's apartment, Virginia decided to marry him.
Margaret Polk: Roger had bought her a lot of pretty clothes. He'd given her beautiful things, and Edith just tied them up in the backyard and burned them. She was just that kind of person. Edith did that, the mother of Virginia. Because she didn't want Virginia to have anything to do with Clinton.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Complicated Man by Michael Takiff. Copyright © 2010 by Michael Takiff. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Author's Note.................... xi
Introduction: An Endless Argument.................... 1
Part I • Local Hero, 1946–1987....................
1. Small Town Boy: Hope, Arkansas.................... 9
2. A Big City (pop. 29,307): Hot Springs.................... 17
3. Positive, Positive, Positive, Positive: Georgetown.................... 32
4. Man of the World: Oxford and Yale.................... 36
5. On the Move: An Arkansas Politician.................... 42
6. Too Much, Too Soon, Too Bad: Rookie Governor.................... 51
7. Out of the Woodshed: Exile and Return.................... 64
8. Busy, Busy, Busy: Governor Again.................... 66
9. Comfort Level: Bill and Black Arkansas.................... 79
10. Not Bad, But ...: Potential Unfulfilled.................... 83
Part II • Rising Star, 1987–1992....................
11. National Democrat: Moving Toward the White House.................... 87
12. Going for It: Candidate.................... 101
13. Near-Death Experience: New Hampshire, 1992.................... 108
14. All Roads Lead to Madison Square Garden: Nominee.................... 122
15. A Bubba, Not a Bozo: President-Elect.................... 131
Part III • Stumble, 1993–1994....................
16. Not an Admiral: Transition.................... 147
17. Bedlam at Birth: Getting Started.................... 149
18. Bill Asks, Colin Tells: The President, the Gays, the Military.......... 150
19. New Kid in Town: Permanent Washington Greets the Clintons.............. 158
20. Debt on Arrival: Recharting an Economic Course.................... 168
21. A Casino for Jesus: The Budget Bill.................... 173
22. The Yanks Are Coming: Navigating a Post–Cold War World................. 178
23. Trade War: Passing NAFTA.................... 184
24. Heroic Measures: The Fight to Reform Health Care.................... 190
25. Stand-Up Guys: Bill, Boris, Jiang, Fidel.................... 196
26. Action, Inaction: Somalia and Rwanda.................... 201
27. No Way to Run a Railroad: Fixing a Dysfunctional White House........... 207
28. From Humiliation to Celebration: Haiti.................... 214
29. Picturing Peace: The Oslo Signing.................... 216
30. Something Is Rotten in the State of Arkansas: Whitewater, the Scandal
Begins.................... 221
31. Golfing with Willie Mays: Bill Among Friends.................... 232
32. Rebuke: The 1994 Midterm Election.................... 237
Part IV • Recovery, 1995–1996....................
33. Picking up the Pieces: The Aftermath.................... 243
34. Relevant: Newt versus Clinton.................... 246
35. Pastor to the Nation: Oklahoma City.................... 247
36. End of an Era: The Road Back.................... 252
37. This Town Ain't Big Enough: Shutdown Showdown.................... 255
38. Shalom, Chaver: The Death of Yitzhak Rabin.................... 263
39. I'll Show You Mine If ...: The Big Mistake.................... 269
40. A Commander in Chief (Finally) Commands: Bosnia, Solved................ 271
41. Ballot-Box Missionary: Irish Troubles, Irish Votes.................... 276
42. A Deal. With the Devil? Ending Welfare as We Know It................... 284
43. Slippery or Steadfast? Shapeshifter.................... 288
44. Piece of Cake: Reelection.................... 293
Part V • Humiliation: 1997–2000....................
45. Reckless, Stupid, Human: Wasting a Precious Gift.................... 303
46. Big Bucks Bedroom: Scandal of the Year, 1997.................... 307
47. Nailed! Linda and Lucianne.................... 309
48. Pants on Fire: The Jones Deposition.................... 311
49. The Bombshell Wears a Beret: Enter Monica.................... 317
50. Scandal? What Scandal? Compartmentalization.................... 324
51. The Puritan and the Pol: Starr versus Clinton.................... 326
52. Respite: A Tour of Africa.................... 329
53. Today's Word Is Is: The Grand Jury.................... 332
54. Speech Defect: An Unapologetic Apology.................... 337
55. Sine Qua Non: Ulster's Peacemaker.................... 341
56. Softcore: The Starr Report.................... 344
57. For Mature Audiences Only: A Committee, a TV Show.................... 346
58. DeLayed Reaction: The Midterms and the Majority Whip................... 351
59. Impeach the Rapist! Fifty Boxes, Four Articles.................... 355
60. Amazing: A Speech in Gaza.................... 358
61. Bad Guys: Going After Bin Laden and Saddam.................... 361
62. The Hypocrisy Police: Bob Livingston, Porn Star.................... 368
63. It's Official: Impeached.................... 372
64. It's About Sex: The Trial.................... 374
65. Seventy-Eight Days: Kosovo.................... 380
66. Down to the Wire: Camp David and the Clinton Ideas.................... 385
67. In Denial: Bill Clinton and the Election of 2000.................... 392
Part VI • Citizen Clinton, 2001–....................
68. Parting Shots: Leaving the White House.................... 399
69. Convening Power: The Clinton Foundation.................... 403
70. Chasing a Buck: Making Multimillions Multinationally................... 411
71. Bill in a China Shop: Hillary for President, 2008.................... 414
72. Unintended Consequences: Clinton-Era Deregulation and the Financial
Crisis of 2008–2009.................... 420
73. Envoy: A Visit to North Korea.................... 423
74. And Now? The Future of Bill Clinton.................... 424
Epilogue: Closing Argument.................... 429
Speakers in A Complicated Man.................... 435
Notes.................... 445
Acknowledgments.................... 477
Photo Credits.................... 479
Index.................... 480
What People are Saying About This
This is an ambitious and impressive work. Takiff has taken on a daunting subject and done very well with it.(Lewis L. Gould, University of Texas at Austin)
"Packed with fascinating personal perspective and testimony, Michael Takiff's A Complicated Man wholly justifies its title. The book is far more than a kaleidoscopic oral biography of President Bill Clinton. Aspect by aspect, it guides us through the struggles of postmodern America, as the most ambitious baby boomer of his generation seeks to modernize the Democratic Party—and, as in a Greek drama, is fated to be destroyed. Veritably, an all-American saga, with a cast of thousands—favorable and unfavorable.(Nigel Hamilton, author of American Caesars: Lives of the Presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush)
This volume is an outstanding accomplishment. The Clinton that emerges is remarkably rich and three-dimensional: a protean and mercurial figure as likely to dazzle as he is to disappoint; his own worst enemy and his own best resource; a man of extraordinarily intense emotional need and extraordinarily impressive intellect and commitment. A historic contribution to the biographical record which will stand for generations.(Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America)
This book is perfectly titled. Bill Clinton was and is, indeed, 'a complicated man,' one of the three greatest natural politicians among twentieth-century presidents, along with FDR and LBJ, but also strangely flawed. These testimonies by people who knew him well throughout his life and career delve into both the strengths and weaknesses of this fascinating figure.(John Milton Cooper, author of The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt)