{"id":18619,"date":"2024-11-24T10:06:10","date_gmt":"2024-11-24T10:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=18619"},"modified":"2024-11-24T10:06:10","modified_gmt":"2024-11-24T10:06:10","slug":"citizen-my-life-after-the-white-house-by-bill-clinton-review-convivial-without-being-confidential","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=18619","title":{"rendered":"Citizen: My Life After the White House by Bill Clinton review \u2013 convivial without being confidential"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\"><span style=\"color:var(--drop-cap);font-weight:700;\" class=\"dcr-15rw6c2\">A<\/span>merican presidents are supposed to renounce pomp and disappear into private life when their term ends. George Washington enjoyed sampling the whiskey produced by the distillery at his Virginia plantation, while George W Bush currently amuses himself by clearing underbrush on his Texas ranch. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/clinton\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Bill Clinton<\/a>, aged only 54 when he left office in 2001, spurned bucolic oblivion; as he says with scriptural solemnity: \u201cI didn\u2019t think my work here on Earth was finished just yet.\u201d Although he calls his memoir <em>Citizen<\/em> to signal his reduced status, he admits to hankering after his years as a conqueror, with military bands that struck up Hail to the Chief as his personal anthem whenever he strode into a room.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\">Because the presidency has grown ever more undemocratically monarchical, Clinton toyed with a possible succession. His wife\u2019s candidacy in 2016 offered him the prospect of returning to the White House as her First Gentleman, and his daughter, Chelsea, might have exotically extended the family line: in 2002 Muammar Gadaffi suggested marrying her to his son and thereby \u201claunching a dynasty\u201d. But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2016\/nov\/09\/hillary-clinton-concedes-election-donald-trump-speech\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Hillary lost to Trump<\/a>, Chelsea nixed the proposal, and instead Clinton has incorporated himself. He set up the Clinton Foundation, kept it flush with his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2007\/feb\/24\/usa.ewenmacaskill\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">lecture fees<\/a> and soon presided over an empire of eponymous acronyms &#8211; the CCI (Clinton Climate Initiative), the CDI (Clinton Development Initiative), the CGI (Clinton Global Initiative), the CHAI (Clinton Health Access Initiative), and so on to the end of the alphabet.<\/p>\n<aside data-spacefinder-role=\"inline\" class=\"dcr-nyoej5\"><svg viewbox=\"0 0 22 14\" style=\"fill:var(--pullquote-icon);\" class=\"dcr-scql1j\"><path d=\"M5.255 0h4.75c-.572 4.53-1.077 8.972-1.297 13.941H0C.792 9.104 2.44 4.53 5.255 0Zm11.061 0H21c-.506 4.53-1.077 8.972-1.297 13.941h-8.686c.902-4.837 2.485-9.411 5.3-13.941Z\"\/><\/svg><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"dcr-zzndwp\"><p>Countries expecting seismic upsets are tipped off about his likely availability: &#8216;I\u2019ll show up if I can&#8217;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\">He is frank about his initial motive for keeping busy. \u201cI had to start making money,\u201d he admits, mostly to pay the legal bills accrued during the Republican attempt to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/1998\/oct\/09\/clinton.usa\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">impeach him<\/a> over his entanglement with Monica Lewinsky. Yet for this hyperactive man, being busy is its own reward. In the first section of his book he hurls himself into disaster zones like an ambulance-chasing attorney, usually taking celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey or Sean Penn along for the adrenalised ride. \u201cI volunteered to help,\u201d he says after hearing about an earthquake in Gujurat. With the Asian tsunami he teasingly stands on ceremony: \u201cMy staff called the White House to say I wanted to help.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\">On the ground he is generous with his presence, reporting that at an Indian hospital he \u201cvisited with the patients and families who wanted to say hello\u201d. In a Rwandan village he and Chelsea helpfully mime the filtration process of murky water that would benefit \u201ccountless millions of poor people\u201d. A Puerto Rican hurricane supplies \u201cthe most fun\u201d when Lin-Manuel Miranda lays on a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/stage\/2019\/jan\/11\/hamilton-musical-puerto-rico-joyful-homecoming-but-complicated\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">performance of <\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/stage\/2019\/jan\/11\/hamilton-musical-puerto-rico-joyful-homecoming-but-complicated\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Hamilton<\/a><\/em>; George Clooney, despatched by Nespresso to encourage ruined coffee planters, joins the party. After a consoling sortie to the battered Maldives, Clinton resumes a triumphal junket \u201cto China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to promote my autobiography\u201d. Other countries expecting seismic upsets are tipped off about his likely availability: \u201cI\u2019ll show up if I can.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"2f9fe09c-b83e-400b-8903-ea92544595fd\" data-spacefinder-role=\"supporting\" data-spacefinder-type=\"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.ImageBlockElement\" class=\" dcr-a2pvoh\"><figcaption data-spacefinder-role=\"inline\" class=\"dcr-1pvqcrw\"><span class=\"dcr-1inf02i\"><svg width=\"18\" height=\"13\" viewbox=\"0 0 18 13\"><path d=\"M18 3.5v8l-1.5 1.5h-15l-1.5-1.5v-8l1.5-1.5h3.5l2-2h4l2 2h3.5l1.5 1.5zm-9 7.5c1.9 0 3.5-1.6 3.5-3.5s-1.6-3.5-3.5-3.5-3.5 1.6-3.5 3.5 1.6 3.5 3.5 3.5z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><span class=\"dcr-1qvd3m6\">Clinton with fellow former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush at a golf tournament in New Jersey, 2017.<\/span> Photograph: Rob Carr\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\">Having shown up, Clinton can be counted on to speechify. Although he believes that \u201cthe world doesn\u2019t need another talkfest\u201d, he is unstoppably loquacious. With <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2011\/dec\/19\/kim-jong-il\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Kim Jong-il<\/a> he picks over \u201cthe usual stilted talking points\u201d and in Bosnia he delivers terse \u201cremarks\u201d. In Accra, however, boosted by loudspeakers at a rally in an open square, he holds forth to a million auditors, \u201cthe largest crowd I\u2019ve ever addressed\u201d. He mistakenly assumes that George HW Bush is equally gabby and obliges him \u201cto talk too long to too many people\u201d on one of their humanitarian tours; George W Bush, raising funds for yet another hurricane, astutely warns Clinton to be \u201cshort and sweet\u201d. Only once is he both out-talked and unmanned. As a student at Oxford, invited to tea at a women\u2019s college, he likens himself to the ball boy at a testicular tennis match, exhausted by \u201cthe verbal serves and volleys that flew across the net\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\">Garrulous he may be, but Clinton is convivial without being confidential. On a mission to extricate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2009\/aug\/07\/north-korea-journalists-lisa-ling\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">two journalists held hostage<\/a> in North Korea, he remembers to be diplomatically expressionless in the official photograph and even rehearses not smiling. This long book about himself has the same ultimately dreary impersonality. \u201cWe all experience good times and grief,\u201d he says, shuttering his private life. He bridles when accused by an interviewer of not apologising personally to Monica Lewinsky: didn\u2019t he express generalised regrets in a public forum during a meeting with \u201cfaith leaders\u201d at the White House? It was not, he says, \u201cmy finest hour\u201d, referring to the tetchy interview, not to his exploitation of an infatuated intern.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\">Autobiographical anecdotes are twisted into what Clinton calls \u201cteachable moments\u201d, as when his reminiscence of an outdoor toilet in his Arkansas boyhood, \u201cattractive to snakes in the summer\u201d, introduces a homily about \u201cproductive grassroots partnerships with business\u201d. The snakes must have been real enough but the grass they slither in is merely metaphorical. A single specimen of candid unpolitical speech is brattishly uttered by the three-year-old Chelsea when introduced to George HW Bush at his home in Maine. \u201cWhere\u2019s the bathroom?\u201d she asks her host.<\/p>\n<aside data-spacefinder-role=\"inline\" class=\"dcr-nyoej5\"><svg viewbox=\"0 0 22 14\" style=\"fill:var(--pullquote-icon);\" class=\"dcr-scql1j\"><path d=\"M5.255 0h4.75c-.572 4.53-1.077 8.972-1.297 13.941H0C.792 9.104 2.44 4.53 5.255 0Zm11.061 0H21c-.506 4.53-1.077 8.972-1.297 13.941h-8.686c.902-4.837 2.485-9.411 5.3-13.941Z\"\/><\/svg><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"dcr-zzndwp\"><p>America, he says, has gone &#8216;off the rails&#8217;, although responsible commentators try &#8216;to keep the train on the tracks&#8217;: is he angling for honorary membership of Aslef?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\">No wonder that Clinton, always on guard against intimate leakages, so enjoyed collaborating with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2021\/apr\/26\/james-patterson-books-bill-clinton-interview\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">James Patterson<\/a> on two thrillers published in 2018 and 2021, in which successive US presidents shed their inhibitions and enjoy careers as action heroes: the first anonymously slips out of the White House to thwart a cyberterrorist, the second ventures to Libya to rescue his kidnapped daughter. Clinton warns that climate change will eject us into \u201ca real-life sequel to the post-apocalyptic Road Warrior movies\u201d, but that swashbuckling apparently appeals to him. Politics, by contrast, seems as deadly dull as the language he uses to describe it. America, he says, has gone \u201coff the rails\u201d, although responsible commentators try \u201cto keep the train on the tracks\u201d: is he angling for honorary membership of Aslef?<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\">Handed a microphone, Clinton is eager to share \u201can overview of how I view the world\u201d, although these omniscient surveys mostly consist of faded neoliberal truisms. At the end of his book, this overview of the world is replaced by an underview of the universe as he scrutinises \u201cthe far reaches of outer space\u201d at a scientific observatory in Hawaii. The interstellar void seen through the telescope makes him ask, with a shudder that the banal phrasing fails to muffle: \u201cWhat does it all mean in the grand scheme of things?\u201d His foundation, its funds and its global good works suddenly shrivel, and Clinton rebukes those who pursue \u201cworldly political power\u201d with a misplaced messianic zeal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\">Then a few lines later he resumes pontificating about public service, and after a possible glimpse of a \u201ccreator God\u201d out there in the darkness, he concludes by insisting \u201cI\u2019m happy.\u201d This was written before the recent election; I\u2019ll bet he no longer feels quite so cosmically complacent.<\/p>\n<footer class=\"dcr-106f06m\">\n<p class=\"dcr-106f06m\"><span data-dcr-style=\"bullet\"\/> <em>Citizen: My Life After the White House<\/em> by Bill Clinton is published by Cornerstone (\u00a330). To support the <em>Guardian<\/em> and <em>Observer<\/em> order your copy at <a href=\"https:\/\/guardianbookshop.com\/citizen-9781529154719\/\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply<\/p>\n<\/footer>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<hr style=\"border-top: 2px solid #ccc; margin-top: 20px;\">\n<p><em>Source: <\/em> <em><a href=\"https:\/\/politics.einnews.com\/article\/763344582\/Yl2oOOF533BmvM0H?ref=rss&amp;ecode=kmfm9fDbRbj4OPCJ\">politics.einnews.com\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American presidents are supposed to renounce pomp and disappear into private life when their term ends. George Washington enjoyed sampling the whiskey produced by the distillery at his Virginia plantation, while George W Bush currently amuses himself by clearing underbrush on his Texas ranch. Bill Clinton, aged only 54 when he left office in 2001, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}