WILL Bill Clinton’s autobiography help John Kerry, or is it the worst thing that could have happened to him, just five weeks before the Democratic Convention?
The former President is treating the question with tact, but his would-be successor has shown a nervousness that stops well short of warmth.
From the few recent polls that have tried to take the temperature of the national mood on Clinton, the answer is probably reassuring for Kerry: that Clinton attracts slightly more Americans than he repels.
But judging current views of this memorably controversial President is hardly a forensic certainty. Kerry’s squeamishness is understandable.
The only choice open to Kerry in the next few weeks is whether to embrace the Clinton phenomenon, or to try to keep aloof. There is nothing he can do to stop it happening.
Advertisement
Clinton, who exasperated his publishers for three years by being unable to predict the date of finishing, finally delivered.
From next week, a first print run of 1.5 million copies of My Life will pour out across the United States, fanned by interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Good Morning America, and a live “town hall meeting” in which radio listeners can question him.
The cover picture shows him thinner, browner, fitter, than in the junk-food days of his presidency, with the familiar grin that is rueful but not exactly repentant.
From previews, it seems he has said a lot about the impact of his affair with Monica Lewinsky on his family. He has delivered his own judgment (“a terrible moral error”), but he appears to have added little new on the affair itself.
Many might feel, after the pruriently exhaustive interrogation by prosecutor Kenneth Starr, that there was nothing more to find out. All the same, his publishers, and many Americans who pay $35 for the book, may still have hoped to find an emotional rather than legal account of what he thought he was doing. No doubt wisely, he seems to have stopped short of that kind of revelation. If the book proves, as the previews suggest, to be a brisk recapitulation of past confessions and apologies, then it may restore some lost political wholesomeness.
Advertisement
Four years ago, Al Gore felt no doubt: Clinton was toxic. But many reckon Gore let his personal fury override political judgment, and recklessly threw away what was in fact an asset on the campaign trail.
For Kerry, the problem is similar, but muted by the passage of time. Kerry is criticised above all for lacking charisma, the quality which Clinton still powerfully possesses.
But would aligning himself with Clinton let him share that magic — or would it emphasise his own drabness? Would the less desirable parts of Clinton’s colourful reputation rub off as well?
Most important, how many diehard Clinton-haters are there who would hold any association against Kerry?
In a Gallup poll in June last year, 54 per cent of respondents said they had a favourable opinion of Clinton, while 45 per cent did not.
Advertisement
At the end of October, 57 per cent thought favourably of him, to some degree, while 41 per cent did not.
Those figures are broadly encouraging. But within the group of those who did not like Clinton, a fifth had an “extremely unfavourable” view, while only 13 per cent said they liked him strongly.
So the cautious warmth Kerry has deployed is probably the right formula. He mentions him sporadically, and invoked his name 11 times in a speech last month in Clinton’s home state of Arkansas.
But there may also be a valuable lesson in the Clinton years about how Kerry should fight for the centre ground.
Kerry is struggling to oust a President who has been if anything more divisive than Clinton, splitting the country over the Iraq war. Although Bush still enjoys support on the economy, many Republicans worry about rising deficits.
Advertisement
Reminding Americans of Clinton’s achievement in appealing to the centre may give Kerry a few more tools to fight with. Clinton’s economic record is a useful one; so is his vigorous account in interviews this week of how his Administration was tough on terrorism and on Osama bin Laden.
If voters can be persuaded to forget the intern, impeachment and junk-food binges, and to remember Clinton’s record in office, it could help Kerry.
Certainly, that is the text which Clinton, with an eye on the history books as well as sales, has tried to deliver.