Clinton's charm and confessions play well on TV
Within minutes of sitting down with Oprah Winfrey on Tuesday, Bill Clinton had divulged the details of his diet and exercise regimen, acknowledged his burdensome role as a lifelong "secret keeper," and vividly recalled how as a little boy he witnessed his alcoholic stepfather battling with his mother in "the bedroom of our little bitty house."
There hasn't been a prominent male figure so comfortable in the chatty, confessional, and soap-operatic universe of daytime TV since Phil Donahue was in his prime. And the former president's dominance of the airwaves this week seemed to prove that the enduring legacy of the Clinton presidency is not some event or crisis or achievement. It is the man himself.
"Bill Clinton Explains Himself" was the cover headline on this week's Time magazine, and that aptly sums up the frantic television tour this week. He appeared on "60 Minutes" with Dan Rather on Sunday, then talked with daytime diva Winfrey, and made dueling interview appearances yesterday morning with Charles Gibson on ABC's "Good Morning America" and Katie Couric on NBC's "Today" show. Tonight he talks with the sultan of the soft schmooze, CNN's Larry King.
Clinton's widely televised re-emergence was choreographed with the release of "My Life," his 957-page autobiography. His publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, has already printed a whopping 2.25 million copies, but that's just a fraction of the nearly 16 million Americans who watched the "60 Minutes" broadcast, the highest-rated nonsports show for the week. For those Americans unwilling or unable to delve into the massive Clinton tome, his TV interviews were the Cliffs Notes version of the eagerly awaited book.
Interviewers dutifully questioned him about everything from his efforts to kill Osama bin Laden to the critical issues in the 2004 presidential election. Yet their real focus was not on policy or politics, but on trying to figure out the gifted but flawed man whose relatively uneventful presidency never seemed to get out of the way of his oversized personality.
Displaying a familiar array of characteristics -- the biting of the lip, the contemplative look in the eye, the deft mind, and the quick tongue -- Clinton revealed why he is a compelling if not always convincing TV performer. Even jousting with such luminaries as Rather, Winfrey, and Couric, he was the star who commanded the camera and the conversation. And he shifted from contrition to combativeness and from self-examination to sheer spin just as easily as he changed from his New York power suits into his Arkansas blue jeans.
The post-presidential Clinton was certainly willing to discuss, if not fully examine, the failings that led the most powerful man in the world into a fateful liaison with a White House intern. (If America can cotton to the idea of a vicious mobster like Tony Soprano baring his soul to his shrink, maybe we're ready for a president who uses television as the psychiatrist's couch.)
In his talk with Rather, Clinton said the Monica Lewinsky affair was the result of losing "a struggle with my old demons." In a moment that probably touched some supporters and caused eye-rolling among detractors, the former president teared up when Rather showed footage of his late mother describing him as a "wonderful son, just a wonderful son."
Under Winfrey's gentle but skillful prodding, Clinton talked of his two lives as the outwardly happy child and the boy who had to "internalize" the trauma of a difficult home life. On "Today," he also acknowledged feeling "sorry" for Lewinsky and "terrible" about his role in the ordeal she endured.
But Clinton is a complicated man whose contrition and introspection was mixed with more aggressive behavior. And on occasion he resorted to time-worn patterns of spin in deflecting painful questions about his past.
Although he perfunctorily admitted to Rather that he regretted the statement that he had tried marijuana but had not inhaled, Clinton doggedly reiterated that "it was absolutely true. . . . I was incapable of inhaling." In a creative piece of biography, he suggested to Winfrey that political enemies -- including House Speaker Newt Gingrich and special prosecutor Kenneth Starr -- helped save his marriage by keeping Hillary angry at them rather than focused on his misdeeds. "How can I hate Starr?" he told Winfrey. "He made me look good to Hillary."
At times, Clinton also verged on the angrily defiant. In an interview with the BBC program "Panorama," his famous temper flared in response to questions about the Lewinsky episode, and he responded by assailing the media's proclivity to "to hurt people . . . to talk about how bad people are and all their personal failings." On yesterday's "Today" segment, Clinton said flatly that he had incurred the relentless wrath of Starr simply because he had been elected president and had spoiled Republican dreams of keeping permanent control of the White House.
The closing sentiments on "60 Minutes" were memorably defining, with Clinton declaring the messy impeachment battle to be "a badge of honor. I don't see it as a great stain, because it was illegitimate. On the day I die, I'll still be glad I fought 'em. And I'll still be glad that I beat 'em."
