William McPherson | Testing the Current / 2013

a lost america

by Douglas Messerli

 

William McPherson Testing the Current (New York: New York Review Books, 2013)

 

The year is 1939, when a young boy, Tommy McAllister is 9 years of age. His family and all their friends seem to have escaped the effects of the Great Depression, while living in almost Belle Époque splendor as they shuttle back and forth in what appears to be a Michigan upper peninsula city and between what they describe as “The Island.” Reviewing the book in 1984, upon its original publication, Russell Banks described the location to be Wisconsin, but I prefer to think it as Michigan since the book’s author, William McPherson grew up there—the son of the director of Union Carbide operations in Sault Sainte Maire—and, while the events of the fiction, are not necessarily autobiographical, they are specific enough that we recognize there are certainly personal elements at work in this story.

      In the large rambling house where Tommy and his family live, he is the adored youngster, particularly by his devoted mother, whose other two sons, David and John are at college and working, no longer living at home. It appears that the McAllister’s are the social center of their set, made up of other well-to-couples, and elderly rich women such as Mrs. Steer, Mrs. Appleton, the outlandish Mrs. Slade and others of their ilk. The group also includes the handsome bachelor, Lucien Wolfe, who has mines in Canada and Mexico, the latter to which he retreats for long periods of time. But if the reader is expecting a satiric vision of the Midwest somewhat like Sinclair Lewis’ or even Evan Connell’s Mr. and Mrs. Bridge duo, she will be highly disappointed.

      McPherson’s tale is told almost entirely through Tommy’s eyes and through the fairly non-judgmental thinking of a child simply attempting to assimilate and comprehend the adult world going on around him. Because he is so young in a world of more elderly people, Tommy is both spoiled and permitted things that his brothers and their girlfriends might never have been allowed, and, thus, he becomes a kind of innocent “witness” to this world in a way no others can be. Indeed, we see hardly anyone of his age, only a couple of cousins of friends of the family; and the only child he actually encounters is a school friend, who mocks him for being a “mamma’s boy.”

     The society in which he finds himself is a highly polite one, celebrating at one another’s houses with great regularity and splendor, while refusing to speak at length of family deaths, of the few tragedies they encounter (such the furnace explosion in his father’s plant), or about their own private misbehavior (although occasionally gossiping about it). These polite White Anglo-Saxons, although depending on blacks and local Indians for serving, cooking, and cleaning, would never dare even mention their race or social standing. The beautiful young golf-playing Daisy (a character who reminds us of how close McPherson’s fiction is Fitzgerald’s—also a Midwesterner—The Great Gatsby), and to whom young Tommy is attracted, has married a Jew, even though she continues to attend the communities’ preferred Episcopal Church.

      In short Tommy’s world is one very closed-off. Although he spends long hours with the Country Club’s Buck, its black cook Ophelia, and the Native Americans who ferry him back and forth from the mainland to the Island, his “peers,” so to speak, represent a codified society that is difficult to comprehend by anyone outside its self-built walls, a world which, given our current political situations, reads quite differently (in the reprinted 2013 edition) from what it originally did.

      McPherson treats Tommy in this deep narrative a bit like British writer Ivy Compton-Burnett’s children, as a highly intelligent and completely well-spoken little adults. Only Tommy has not quite figured out what he is witnessing and what to make of it all. During the one highly-eventful year that this work traces, Tommy straightforwardly asks questions of adults who do not always want to answer his inquiries. If they are generally polite and friendly, they also steer him away from certain issues, such as what adultery—a word he has obviously overheard—might mean; or why do his parents, who seem so much in love with one another, and whose glorious 25 (silver) anniversary party the novel celebrates near its end—occasionally argue and, at times, seem to move off from one another? And why does his usually open and honest mother suddenly one day tell him that she is 22 years of age—a fib he has utterly believed, and is later mocked when he shares it with his brother? In little ways and sometimes larger ones, Tommy begins to feel slightly betrayed.

      The most shocking thing he discovers, which he cannot truly explain to himself, is when he hides under the dinner table during an evening dinner party, observing Mr. Wolfe rubbing his mother’s foot. Of course, we know what’s going on, but Tommy, unable to realize its full significance, is confused, even if he senses its significance. Inexplicable, at least to himself, he later steals and hides a letter Wolfe has sent to his mother. But this very scene, and Tommy’s later guilt for his actions, explains why McPherson’s work is so powerful. The author does not sentimentalize his young hero because, even though, like most children, he does yet recognize consequences, he is not truly innocent. Like all children, Tommy realizes his own possible wickedness, as the formerly happy boy begins to test his mother and his limits, giving Mr. Wolfe a gift of a live snake, and refusing to be punished for the act.

     Despite the social niceties of this adult world, Tommy observes their petty gossiping, asides about the self-proclaimed “wicked” Mrs. Slade, and a racial incident when the drunken Mr. Hutchens demands from Ophelia another drink; when she suggests a cup of coffee instead, he shouts “Nigger bitch.” Tommy, we perceive will grow up, as he does in McPherson’s second fiction, To the Sargasso Sea, to be a principled person; the next day he brings, as a gift to Ophelia, one of his favorite objects, a kaleidoscope, a symbol obviously of his sorrow for the racial epithet she has had to endure.

      Even more significant, I believe, is the fact his mother’s adulterous behavior, as Russell Banks has noted, “comes to nothing.” In this world, no one actually suffers for their actions; the society is too polite and refined to do anything but to gossip behind closed doors.

     But, of course, this will be the last summer of their existence, and the destruction of their world will be furious and swift. Already in the book’s very last scenes, figures such as the curious and loving Mrs. Steers is focused on her radio set, its broadcasts hinting at the outbreak of World War II. Both Tommy’s brothers will soon be swept up into the War, and families living in enclaves such as those in Grande Rivière will have their seemingly never-ending patterns of parties and social isolation swept away.

     The young boy of McPherson’s tightly-knit realist fiction, is already testing the current that he will soon have to face, a world that no longer can afford its isolationist attitudes, but must endure the great rapids facing it ahead.

 

Los Angeles, May 13, 2017

Reprinted from EXPLORINGfictions (May 2017).

 

It is sad to think that my dear friend, Bill, did not, ultimately endure all of those significant shifts of cultural change. Certainly, he was blessed, after attending the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. receiving a degree before becoming a New York editor and gaining the position of Book Reviewer at The Washington Post.

      There, Bill not only wrote his own intelligent reviews, but encouraged figures, who had seldom been welcome to the major newspapers, such as critic Marjorie Perloff, and even a graduate students like me to review, activities that ultimately gained the attention of the national media, resulting in his winning The Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism in 1977.

      Over the next decade, and despite his stated intentions not to do so, Bill began writing the fiction I write about above, later following it up with The Sargasso Sea. Finally, retiring from the Post, Bill inexplicably—at least to friends like me—moved to Romania, writing about post-Nicolae Ceauşescu events in several journals during his 7-year stay.

      Bill returned to Washington, DC after, and I again begin to communicate with him again via e-mail and Facebook. What I didn’t know—and he was far too embarrassed perhaps to tell me—is that he now had lost most of his savings, having invested badly, and was living a near-destitute life, the facts of which are revealed in his beautiful 2014 essay in The Hedgehog Review, “Falling,” in which he describes his history and the current reality of his life. As he writes of his financial mistakes:

 

"I was never remotely rich by what counts for rich today. (That requires a lot of zeroes after the first two or three digits.) But I look through my checkbooks from twenty-five and thirty years ago and I think, Wow! What happened? It was a long, slowly accelerating slide but the answer is simple. I was foolish, careless, and sometimes stupid. As my older brother, who to keep me off the streets invited me to live with him after his wife died, said, shaking his head in warning, “Don’t spend your capital.” His advice was right, but his timing was wrong. I’d already spent it. He sounded like the ghost of my father. Capital produces income. If you want to have an income, don’t dip into your capital. I’d always been a bit of a contrarian, even as a child.

     My money wasn’t working hard enough to finance my adventures, which did, after all, come with a price. I wanted to explore and write about eastern Europe after the fall of the Wall, which I did for several years. It was truly a great adventure, it changed my life, and it was a lot more interesting than thinking about what it cost, which was a lot. There’d always been enough money. I assumed there always would be. (I think this is called denial.) So another dip into the well. In my checkbook, I listed these deposits as draws. That sounded very businesslike, almost as if I knew what I was doing. Sometimes I did. (It’s hard to resist a little self-justification.)"

     A few days before his death on March 28, 2017, a mutual friend wrote to tell me that Bill had moved into a hospice, near death, with his daughter Jane in attendance. News came of his death, of congestive heart failure and pneumonia soon after. After testing the many different currents of his life, Bill succumbed to the terrible force of the great rivers around him. He died at age 84.

 

May 13, 2017

Tim Whitmarsh | Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World / 2015

ancient greek and roman atheists

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tim Whitmarsh Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015)

 

The heroes of Greek professor Tim Whitmarsh’s new book—Diogenes the Cynic, Epicurus, Lucretius, Diagoras of Melos, Theodorus of Cyrene, Socrates, Euhemerus of Acragas, Nicanor of Cyprus and numerous Cynics, Skeptics, and Epicureans—are ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and thinkers, all of whom, in one way or another, might be linked to atheism in a time of polytheistic worship. Whitmarsh is not arguing for atheism as much as simply urging that we must not wipe it away, as many have, from the historical record. As Whitmarsh writes:

 

                  The history of atheism matters. It matters not just for

                  intellectual reasons—that is, because it behooves us

                  to understand the past as fully as we can—but also on

                  moral, indeed political grounds. History confers authority

                  and legitimacy. This is why authoritarian states seek to

                  deny it to those they do not favor, destroying historic

                  sites and outlawing traditional practice. Atheist history

                  is not embodied in buildings or rituals in quite the same

                  way, but the principle is identical. If religious belief is

                  treated as deep and ancient and disbelief as recent, then

                  atheism can readily be dismissed as faddish and inconse-

                  quential. Perhaps, even the persecution of atheists can

                  been seen as a less serious problem that the persecution

                  of religious minorities. The deep history of atheism is

                  then in part a human rights issue: it is about recognizing

                  atheists as real people deserving of respect, tolerance,

                  and the opportunity to live their lives unmolested.

 

       Yet to study ancient atheism is not an easy task. Much of the atheist literature has not survived through time, lost among so many of the great Greek and Roman literary works, or left only in fragments. At other times these materials were destroyed after the rise of Constantine and his conversion to Christianity and the later Codex Theodosius during the reign of Theodosius II, which declared laws against heretics. Other atheist statements are embedded in plays such as Euripides’Bellerophon; or, as in the cases of teachers such as Socrates, were never written down, reported only through the voice of figures such as Plato, who ultimately became a strong religious supporter—and who, through his argument for Socrates against the believers who demanded Socrates’ death, seemingly began to sympathize with the enemy, as if suffering, Whitmarsh quips, from an early version of the “Stockholm syndrome.”

       Often, Whitmarsh makes clear, what we know about atheism comes from Skeptic texts, which felt it necessary to argue both sides, and thus talk of those who did not believe as well as those who did. Some ancient texts actually summarized atheistic beliefs, forming early histories of the subject; and doxographies served often as virtual networks in summarizing various historical viewpoints that would not otherwise be available, since the ancient atheists did not generally group in schools or even encounter each other face-to-face.

       As Whitmarsh also makes clear, within the early Greek polytheism, even believers were not a coherent group, each city state and even different city regions having their own gods and cults who related to sacred places unknown to the rest of Greek world. The early “priests,” moreover, did not have sway over law or moral decorum, their purpose being primarily to oversee and celebrate religious sacrifices.

        Even the beliefs of groups often associated with atheism, such as the Epicureans must be parsed, since while claiming that if there were gods they could not possibly be anything like humans and had no desire or need to communicate with human beings, they still existed in the “void” as “thin” beings which humans encountered in dreams and visions.

       With intelligence, grace, and good humor Whitmarsh takes us through the Greek and Roman worlds in language that most educated readers can easily assimilate, laying forth time and again, arguments that help us to see the meaning of words and concepts that meant something different to the ancient world than it might to our own; and thus he helps us perceive a kind of shadow world to the more conservative god-driven worlds of Herodotus, Homer, Virgil, and others, so that by the end of his Battling the Gods one feels one has learned not only a great deal about atheism in the ancient world, but come to understand their values and religiosity as well.

      Finally, one perceives that perhaps the advancements of Catholic Christianity of the first and second centuries A.D. represent a closing down of philosophical speculation rather than an opening up of discourse. As monotheism usurped the polytheistic world, Christianity and other such religions became forces with which to war against, and to punish and destroy those who did not share the same beliefs—issues from which we are clearly suffering still today.

 

Los Angeles, St. Patrick’s Day, 2016

Reprinted from Rain Taxi (Vol. 21, no. 2, Summer 2016).

Thomas Paine | Common Sense / 1775 || Craig Nelson | Thomas Paine, Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations / 2006

common and uncommon sense

by Douglas Messerli

 

Thomas Paine Common Sense (Philadelphia: William and Thomas Bradford, 1776)

Craig Nelson Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (New York: Viking, 2006)

 

One of the most important documents of American history and perhaps the most influential work in swaying the American public to declare independence, Common Sense hardly needs my commentary added to the numerous far more learned commentaries I am sure exist. What struck me upon my first adult reading of the pamphlet was just how “uncommon,” in some regards, Paine’s work is, and, at times, how nonsensical it is, a few examples of which I will mention.

     Paine definitely convinces with his highly Protestant-based arguments against monarchies in general and against the English in particular. Given the complex role government plays and its current self-aggrandizement, however, it will surprise new readers perhaps that, against the natural good of society, Paine sees government as a necessary evil, as a force needed only when society has grown large and diverse enough that it can no longer control aberrant behavior, and, accordingly, needs laws to rule man’s nature. “Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.” Tell that to Washington!

     Paine then proposes a congress of annually changing individuals. But, from a seemingly contradictory position, argues for a large number of representatives in order to better reflect the diversity of viewpoints. Lest he seem to be arguing from a Libertarian viewpoint, however, by work’s end he has conjured up a rather active and complex government, one raising money through commercial land and accruing a national debt, which, he posits, is not only necessary for the fight against England, but an actual good in that it helps to bond its people together.

     His positions against British rule of the colonies, indeed, make a great deal of common sense. But, in the end, his arguments seem to center upon two tenants: 1.) that America will ultimately divorce itself from England anyway, and 2.) that it is now the best time to do so. Not only does he see it as the perfect time in terms of size of population and resources, but also the best time to act before civil unrest forces other kinds of government upon the people or—without a sufficient navy—American cities will be attacked by rebel pirates invading seaports. Why have we no Philadelphia pirate stories? The pirate invasion of Newport? It appears that from the very beginning the settlement of our country had to do with embattlement against lawless and violent forces: the concerns with the pirates of the 18th century would become problems with the renegade gunfighters and the Western Indian tribes of the 19th century.

     One of Paine’s most unusual “commonsensical” observations against English rule is that it is “unnatural” for such a small island to rule such a large land mass. Alas, history—not all of which Paine could be cognizant of—has shown us many such examples, including Britain’s rule of India, Portugal’s of Brazil, Spain of a great many of its conquests, and tiny Belgium’s rule of the Congo. Of course, he might have recalled tiny Rome’s rule of most of the then known world. Yes, it is unnatural.

     Finally, in a later edition, Paine takes on the protests of a Quaker group against his pamphlet by arguing that, since the Quakers believe it is wrong to interfere with any government’s course, it is “un-Quaker-like” to argue against his positions. Putting aside the illogic of the Quaker position, Paine seems to use Quaker theology as a means to quiet any Quaker disagreement. Return to your shells, ye turtles! He might rather have perceived the immense effect of his statements to have engaged such a generally silent gathering. In a sense, with the Quaker involvement in political discussion, one might have recognized his battle had already been won.

 

Rome, Giardino del Lago, Villa Borghese, October 17, 2003

      

 I have no idea what led me to reread Paine’s important text (I must have read Common Sense in high school, but I have no memory of it). Perhaps I had just revisited a movie I have seen dozens of times, Born Yesterday, wherein William Holden as journalist Paul Verrall educates the “junk” king’s moll, “Billie” Dawn, played Judy Holliday, by encouraging her to read, among other writers, Thomas Paine. I do recall that I was considering reprinting it in my Green Integer series (and perhaps someday will do so). In any event, as these annuals have long-ago evidenced, there are few unrelated events in my world. In 2006 a splendid new biography of Paine was published, and I leapt at the chance of knowing more about this American hero.

     After reading Nelson’s elucidating and well-written biography, I realized that, despite my belief of 2003 that many “learned” writings already existed, if Nelson is to be given credence, many of the biographies and evaluations of Paine have been lacking in their understanding of this multifaceted hero, and some have been outright fabrications of his life.

     Nelson’s book begins with the strange disinterment of Paine’s body (unburying and reburying the dead seems to be a minor theme running through the pages of My Year 2003) from a Westchester, New York rural cemetery by former enemy William Cobbett, who attempted to return the corpse to Paine’s native England in order to place it in a proper memorial. He failed to raise money for such a monument, and Nelson’s book ends with the realization that Paine’s body parts, inherited by Cobbett’s family and passed on to others, had completely disappeared, scattered as it were throughout England. It is a fit ending to the adventures of this great American patriot, born Thomas Pain [sic], who, after attempting to awaken the sentiments of freedom-loving Britishers, escaped impending imprisonment by traveling to the British American colonies, and soon after—as a close friend and ally to figures such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and others—literally ignited the American Revolution through his best-selling Common Sense. The American Paine attempted to join the battle as a soldier in Washington’s unit, but was told to return to Philadelphia where he could better serve the cause through his writings.

     Nelson’s portraits of not only Paine but numerous other American patriots who, after the Revolution, felt that all they stood for had failed, are particularly touching, as one realizes that the perspectives of one’s own lifetime are always limited. But in Paine’s case, the despair was not based only upon changes of reputation, but on his inability—despite being one of the best-selling authors of all time—to survive; he received little remuneration or compensation from the American government for his great role in its founding, and was forced to give up the only government position as a governmental clerk because of his literary attacks on special ambassador Silas Deane, whom Paine felt had brokered treaties that also included commercial gains for himself. Although Deane was asked to present Congress with his financial records, and he was replaced by John Adams, he was ultimately found not guilty, after his death, and his heirs were paid a significant amount for recompense. Later, however, it was revealed that Deane had been working as a British informant for most of the Revolution. For Paine, however, it meant from the start of the “affair” that he must fend financially for himself, and within a few years he returned to England, raising so much anti-royalist sentiment in that country that he was forced to flee to France.

     Paine, now a hero in France, equally helped in the French Revolution, becoming a member of the National Convention and joining the French legislation—until various factions made it such a violent affair that his own life was in danger. Without the help of the American representatives Adams and Gouverneur Morris, now his sworn enemies, and receiving only silence from his former friend Washington, Paine had no choice but to remain in harm’s way. Eventually imprisoned, his life was (as Nelson describes it) almost accidentally spared, but his health was ruined, his spirit sapped. Upon his return to the US he had little monies and great responsibilities in his caring from Mme. Bonneville and her three sons, in whose home he had stayed during his last years in France. And despite his continued publications—mostly in support of the Jeffersonians and attacks on the Federalists—he had a difficult time surviving. Certainly, his reputation had been nearly destroyed in America, in part because of his anti-religious affirmations—beliefs, in fact, shared by most of the Revolutionary patriots— in The Age of Reason.

    Beyond the painful story of Paine, his contributions, and his ultimate downfall in the US and France (his reputation had already been destroyed in the British press and public opinion), Nelson reminds us of the conservatism of Hamilton, Marshall, Jay, Madison, the Morrises, and Washington as opposed to those I perceive as more enlightened men such as Jefferson, Paine, and Franklin.  Indeed, politics in the early days of our nation often seem to have been as corrupt, petty, and insular as they are today.

   While clearly oversensitive and often vain—in Nelson’s portraiture of him—Paine comes alive as an impassioned speaker for reasoned governments in opposition to those who would delimit human rights. Not having previously realized that Paine’s father had been a Quaker and that Paine had been reared with Quaker values, I can now more clearly understand his outrage for the Quaker attacks on Common Sense. Yet my closing comments of 2003 seem even more relevant after reading Nelson’s brilliant biography: despite any feelings of failure or necessary defense of his positions, Paine had already won the battle for the hearts of all freedom-loving people of the world.      

     

Los Angeles, December 21, 2006

Taylor Branch | The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President / 2009

echo

by Douglas Messerli

 

Taylor Branch The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009)

 

The Clinton Tapes is a recounting of author Taylor Branch’s involvement with Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001 as he worked with the President to create a personal history of the presidency. Determined not to repeat the disastrous secret tapings of President Nixon, unable to carve out regular hours for written notes, and convinced that he would find it nearly impossible to speak alone into a tape recorder, Clinton ultimately suggested that his friend Branch visit him in the White House irregularly—usually by quickened summons—to ask him questions about events in his administration, which, in turn, stimulated the President to provide long, extended discussions and stories archived by twin recorders. Branch’s activities were kept as secret as they could be, and the tapes, perceived from the beginning as Clinton’s personal property, were hidden away by Clinton himself in the White House.

 

    Branch, however, also taped records of each meeting and summaries of what the two discussed on his return home to Baltimore, and the contents of this lucid and entertaining book are the result of those recordings rather than a distillation of the tapes themselves, which, although serving as a resource for Clinton’s own memoirs, remain within his library, having not yet been opened to the public.

     In that sense, The Clinton Tapes as a book represents less a record of Clinton’s statements as much as it is a memory and evaluation of Clinton’s perceptions and attempts to put himself into an historical context. As much as some readers may find this, accordingly, as a second-hand report of Clinton’s administration, it is all the more enlightening given the personal context in which Branch presents Clinton’s observations and ideas. One might almost describe this work as an autobiographical biography of history. As cumbersome as that may sound, it is in some respects far more revealing, I suggest, than would be Clinton’s comments presented without commentary.

     That Branch, the noted historian of Martin Luther King, became involved in this project, was almost an accident. As Branch writes, “Our new venture had started with convenience and a dusty friendship.” He and Clinton had been friends in the South while coming of age in the civil rights movement, but had gone their different ways since 1972. Visiting Baltimore shortly after the 1992 election, Clinton told the Baltimore Sun reporter that he had missed several of the election night celebrants, including “Baltimore novelist Taylor Branch, a long-time friend.” “I’m just sick about it all,” concluded Clinton, “I’ll call him this week some time.”

     Clinton did not immediately call, but several friends did, some teasing Branch about being called “a novelist,” others curious about his relationship with the new man in power. Shortly after Thanksgiving someone called from the transition office, suggesting that Clinton wanted to see him and his wife, Christy, and the two drove to Washington on December 7th to attend a dinner at Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham’s house.

     That event, in turn, led to an assignment of Branch to write on the President for Life magazine during inauguration day, coverage the Clinton assistants had accepted. Within a day, Branch was sent to the Blair house to begin the pre-inauguration coverage and, almost before he knew what was happening, was drafted to read and comment on a version of the President’s speech. The president-elect was busy rewriting the first half of the address, while his aides and Branch—he, obviously, “off the record” since he was also reporting for Life—worked until four o’clock in the morning suggesting revisions. The fact that Clinton primarily wrote the speech himself just hours before the beginning ceremonies of Inauguration Day foretells the whirlwind of energy which surrounded Clinton in the years ahead.  Only four hours later, notes Branch, “The Blair House foyer crackled with adrenaline…. From a national security briefing, Clinton went by motorcade to Metropolitan AME Church for an inaugural prayer service….”

     Indeed, despite the 663 pages that follow, Clinton seems hardly ever to sleep, summoning Branch to him at all hours of the day and night, and, even when was sick or, after a serious injury, propounding on, evaluating, and foretelling major world events, all with the incredible detail that the man’s prodigious memory called up. As New York Times Book Review writer Joe Klein correctly summarized:

 

                  Bill Clinton is a one-man carnival—a magician, tightrope walker, juggler,

                  hot-dog-eating contestant and burlesque show.

 

As Clinton himself proclaimed, “My only regret is that I have to sleep so much.” “I’d like to be awake all the time.”

     Clinton was also absolutely brilliant, particularly when compared with the slow-minded Bushes on either side of his administration. Each of the numerous conversations Branch recounts are filled with analyses of national and international figures and events: detailed discussions of possible cabinet members are shelved between prescient observations of Palestine and Israeli relationships, accompanied with stunning summaries of the personalities of Arafat, Rabin, Peres, and Syrian president Asad. Evaluations, pro and con, of the North American Free Trade Agreement resolve into comments about Somali warlord General Adid. Precise assessments of the success of UN involvement in Bosnia flow into discussions of the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and summaries of Japanese politics.

     Every encounter with Clinton becomes a scatter-gun commentary on the entirety of world events, revealing his total political involvement. More than any other President, except, perhaps, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Clinton loved politics, absolutely reveling in  the confrontation and compromise necessary for successful political action.

     Despite all of this presentation of Clinton’s complete immersion in history and politics, however, Branch also reveals very personal aspects of the man, his deep love for and involvement with Hilary (with whom, when she occasionally appears in the middle of their conversations, Clinton takes out time to intimately talk) and his devotion to his daughter Chelsea, for whom, on at least one occasion, he cut the discussions short so that he might help with her homework.

     Branch also makes it evident, through Bill and Hilary's brief discussions, that she is just as committed and involved in the political life. Just overhearing some of their conversations as related by Branch, utterly exhausts one. For them love and work are simply inseparable, which helps to explain Hilary’s ability to put aside her husband's painful sexual philandering later in his administration.

     Despite Clinton’s apparent unflappability with regard to politics, however, it is clear that he and Hilary were unprepared for the bitter hostility of some press members and the enormous waste of energy and time the Republicans and others devoted to their downfall, particularly with regard to Kenneth Starr’s seemingly interminable investigation into their involvement with the Whitewater scandal, a relationships with was tangential at most. Both Clinton and Branch, in fear that if word got out about their tapes they would be subpoenaed, resisted discussion of either Whitewater or, later on, Monica Lewinsky. But every so often, in his berating of press hostility, Clinton simply could not resist bemoaning the enormous amount of wasted energy, both by others and himself, on what he perceived as trivial issues.

 

                   Revved up, President Clinton continued with summaries of two recent

                   trials in the Whitewater investigation. Should I remind him of our intention

                   to save this legally sensitive material for a separate tape? Part of me

                   bridled at censorship…. Arkansas accounted for a minuscule fraction

                   of the gargantuan losses that ensued across the national by mismanagement,

                   fraud, or outright theft, and a small part of the Arkansas tab bankrupted

                   thrift institutions associated with the Whitewater land development. The

                   current prosecutions, finally, were not about correction or restitution for

                   any of these failures, which fell against the taxpayers. On the contrary,

                   said Clinton, they were Ken Starr’s attempt to squeeze vulnerable bankers

                   into making some kind of allegation against Clinton, on promise of leniency.

    

     Clinton perceived, in his first term, they he had had some enormous successes, despite the hostility; but it soon became apparent that the Republicans were determined to vote against anything he or the Democrats might propose simply to claim that opposing party had no agenda. Clinton summarizes the polarities of American politics in terms that are terribly disturbing, but appropriate even today:

 

“Our politics are like Bosnia,” the president observed. Leaders were so tapped

in cycles of payback for prior injuries and wrongs, with the press egging on every

fight, that it was hard to see any larger context. He seemed blithely philosophical

about this position. Then again, he suggested that a Bosnia could be the epitome

of politics—if it finally could attain that rare higher plane…."

 

     No matter what one thinks of the man, it is nearly impossible to deny, after reading Branch’s book, that Clinton had a large agenda and saw his role in historical terms that related, in his mind, to that higher plane.. One of the most touching moments in this near-encyclopedic commentary is a moment in which, despite the obvious antagonism he must of felt with former President Nixon, Clinton readily admits:

 

                  A month ago today, he had received from Nixon a letter about Russia that

                  Clinton called the most brilliant communication on foreign policy to reach

                  him as president. Nothing else came close, he said. It was about planning

                  for a “post-Yeltsin era,” with penetrating studies of political characters and

                  fledgling countries.

 

One need only compare that magnanimous view with what the President relates of Robert Dole’s and John McCain’s vindictiveness.

      Ultimately, what strikes one in reading this book in 2010 are the similarities between the Democratic administration of Clinton’s first term and that of President Obama’s. Both achieved significant legislation despite the refusal of the Republicans to embrace little but a policy of “no.” We have yet to see the results of the election of 2011, but we can suspect that it will be quite similar to the results of 1994:

 

"Nowhere in the 1994 elections did a Republican incumbent lose for Congress or

governor, while Democrats across the country lost eight senators, eight

governors, and fifty-five representatives. Republicans gained control of both

legislative chambers in the biggest midterm shift since 1946, the year Clinton

was born."

 

The prospects of Obama, accordingly, who has faced the same political negativity, despite his achievements is disheartening, to say the least.

      Obviously, Obama is not Clinton. He is clearly more conciliatory than Clinton, and hasn’t the lust for politics that Clinton professed. Issues of race also make Obama’s presidency more complex. Despite his evident intelligence and knowledge of political issues, Obama sometimes presents himself as a man of less experience. But the echoes one hears throughout Branch’s book are so strong that they suggest as a country we may never grow out of the Bosnia-like cycle of payback and refusal to participate in true political debate. As Clinton concludes in one of his last sessions with Branch:

 

                     Human nature drove candidates to seek efficiencies and shortcuts by

                     catering to big money. This required callousness over time, even meanness.

                     It was difficult enough to survive. It was hard to keep sight of public

                     purpose, although he insisted that most politicians tried. His voice caught.

                     And it was so very hard to be progressive and win.

 

 

Los Angeles, July 29, 2010

Reprinted from Green Integer Blog (July 2010).