Customer Reviews

All Too Human: A Political Education

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I think some readers and reviewers are missing the point of _All too Human_. In writing this memoir, Mr. Stephanopoulos is NOT attempting to give his audience an all-access look at the private lives of Bill and Hillary. He is offering us a look at HIS life and times (of which the Clintons, obviously, were an integral part) and he does so with candor and class. This tome is honest, forthright, and the author doesn't hedge on his true thoughts and opinions of his past situations, performance, peers, and boss (qualities many of the principles highlighted in the book are famous for not possessing). I praise his frank recounting of how he was working for himself as well as for the president and his agenda. Those who chide Stephanoulos for striving for personal success, and telling us how he pursued it, need to reevaluate their own career motives before they pass judgement. This book is strongly recommended to any young person eager to see what it takes to make it in DC politics and still have a conscience. And, as you read this, bear in mind that I'M A REPUBLICAN! Kudos to George for a job well done.

I will make a bold statement: this is the best book by a political insider that has ever been written. First, Mr. Stephanopoulus should seriously consider a second career as a novelist. His writing is lucid; his physical descriptions vivid; and his self-analysis revealing. Second, Stephanopoulus perfectly captures what it was like to work in the Clinton White House. His public visibility gives his words great credibility and his willingless to admit mistakes and shortcomings is laudable. You fel as if you are personally traveling with George through a maze of political difficulties and rewards. You'll also feel closer to Bill Clinton, understanding him better as a person and appreciating his flaws and achievements as a president. All in all, the best political book of the year.

This book is a fascinating, and sometimes horrifying, view of the Clinton campaign, the Clinton White House, and Clinton himself. If you've ever wondered why, and then how, a principled person slowly loses principles, Stephanopoulos explains to us how he explained it to himself. Stephanopoulos has been wrongly charged with being too angst-ridden. It's not angst; it's introspection, which his former boss apparently does not engage in. Clinton has probably not examined why he surrendered his principles; he probably doesn't even recognize that he has done so. Was it betrayal for Stephanopoulos to write this book? No, not especially when compared to Clinton's numerous and massive betrayals. This book is valuable today, because it helps us understand the current president. It will be valuable tomorrow as a political memoir.

George Stephanopoulos certainly saw it all firsthand. A Rhodes Scholar who worked for the Dukakis campaign and for Richard Gephardt, Stephanopoulos joined Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign because Clinton seemed to have it all. As his time progressed and life in the White House became an exciting but difficult reality, depression and other problems set in. In this very in-depth book, Stephanopoulos gives the reader a view inside the Clinton White House that could only come from one with such close access. He writes of both the Clinton Administration's best and worst moments, and pulls no punches when they made mistakes. One particular highlight is his contentious and venemous relationship with former Clinton aide Dick Morris, whose ideas always seemed to conflict with Stephanopoulos. He also manages to present his story in a "just the facts" style; there's no coaching the reader to believe the author's own ideology, so readers of all political viewpoints can read it. If you are a fan of Bill Clinton, this book will remind you of what went both right and wrong. If you hate him, this may remind you of Clinton's worst attributes. Either way, All Too Human is an important study of life in the White House with all of both its positive and negative aspects.

I've noted in a number of other reviews a common complaint with the book; where is the detail on Clinton, or Hilary, Gore or other aides? This is a biography of Stephanopoulos, not a story of Clinton. It's George's perspective about the whole experience, not just about Clinton. You will learn what George thought about Clinton, what impressed him, and what disappointed him about his boss. This book gives you a great feel for what George lived through during the 2 election campaigns and Clinton's first term. He is honest about his vying for position with the President against other advisors, about things he did well, and times that he blew it. You come away feeling what it might really be like to work on the inside of the greatest office in the world, the glamour, the ad hoc scrambling to push positions through Congress, the constant damage control sessions, the full-time job to spin facts into the desired public perception (George is the Rumplestiltskin of the White House in that regard).

It confirmed what I'd felt reading newspapers about the Clinton administration during the first term; the White House and Congress are not all working together in the best interests of the US. Rather, each faction, whether Repub, Demo, Special Interest, etc. is only trying to maximize their own interests at the expense of anyone else's. (Sounds like a good application for Nash's game theory). Sure, this account is not an objective overview of anything; this is what George saw, felt, did, how he failed and succeeded. Anyone wanting to work in politics will find it interesting. Anyone affected by politics (that's all of us citizens) will cringe at realizing it's all on the job training each time a new administration comes in to office. I really enjoyed the read.

Providing riveting commentary on behind the scenes of the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign and early white house years, George Stephanopolous saw it all during his tenure as Clinton's aide, the good, the bad and the outright surreal.

This is not to say that it is an anti-Clinton polemic by any means.

Indeed Stephanopolous still likes his former boss as a person, and one gets the feeling he was genuinely shocked and hurt by the allegations and revelations that later developed about a certain intern. Were he not so passionate about the ideals he believed in, even as characters such as Dick Morris siphoned away the populist spin, he would have not cared as much as he did when he did.

If the early Clinton White House can be faulted for being left of center by some people, the intentions by early Clinton staffers were genuinely motivated out of concern for the less fortunate and maligned. Their Ivy league idealism gave younger gen-xers such as myself hope that we would be better represented by this administration. Whatever Clinton's real intentions, Stephanopolus wanted to celebrate diversity and progressive ideals through the public policy process.

While this idealism would theoretically seem ingrating, the author weaves his tale in such a way to draw sympathy from the reader. Stephenopolus is not a faceless bureaucrat, but somebody with real feelings and dreams. Aside from the heavy politics, there are lighter moments woven into the book as well such as the revelation that Vice President Gore's sense of humor hilariously contrasted with his staid public image. Even administration devotees like myself were laughing along at the punch lines.

Less funny however is the stress encountered by the author. Despite his stellar academic and political career, he never seemed to know how to effectively manage stress until it was too late. Of course by then, he desperately needed to preserve his health and thus resigned. I am concerned how a Columbia graduate could have remained oblivious to his own well-being until it affected his dream job and even his personal relationships with his girlfriend.

Neverless, this is a book that will leave all readers--irespective of political affiliation-impressed.

For better or worse, this book was impossible to put down. I've always enjoyed the author's commentary on the Sunday morning show and other appearances. This book definitely gives the reader tour of his inner motivations, Machievellian though they may seem at times.

I have read Woodward's book on the early economic policies of Clinton's presidency, and I don't believe that George's book differs in its spin from any other non-fiction account of a less-than-perfect modern president. He certainly does not downplay the potentially damaging effects of existing in that environment for any length of time.

George has learned a lot in his political career, and I appreciated the book as a means of his sharing some of that accumulated knowledge with his audience. Again, for better or worse, he has provided an insider's glimpse into the inner workings of the white house: unique knowledge that most of us will never acquire first-hand. And he seems quite aware that some of his own views may color his representation of some people or events.

This is a kind of a valuable book for anyone interested in modern political theory, regardless of your personal judgment of George for writing (and/or selling)it. I have already passed my copy along to friends and family.

Perhaps the most disturbing thread of the book is its validation that the people we elect to high office do not seem to fit the revered images we hold of our forefathers--Washington, Lincoln, etc.--whom we place on some higher, predestined pedestal. Instead, today's leaders are real people with motives, personalities, and needs, much like ourselves. Our leaders are also surrounded by real people with motives, personalities, and needs, much like ourselves. All too human, indeed.

George Stephanopoulos' memoir of working in the White House during Bill Clinton's first term in office makes you feel like a fly on the wall of the Oval Office. Written in that hypersmart, jargon-fluent style familiar to "West Wing" viewers, "All Too Human" is an engaging, candid companion to readers of any political stripe, in part an impassioned defense of one of America's most infuriatingly bipolar personalities, in part a cautionary tale of power trumping principle.

Among the best and brightest that made up Clinton's 1992 campaign staff, no one burned brighter than Stephanopoulos, a senior advisor to the President at the tender age of 31 whose charge included Congress (he formerly worked for House Majority Whip Dick Gephardt) and satisfying Clinton's critical liberal base.

Stephanopoulos makes no bones about being a true believer. He likens his work with Clinton to being an altar boy for the Greek Orthodox priests of his youth. "It's Nazi time out there," Clinton explodes when the Republicans campaign against him in a special congressional election in Kentucky. Stephanopoulos seems on board with this Hitlerian characterization of the GOP.

Yet Stephanopoulos' passion is tempered by a cool calculating side that finds much common ground with the president, too much, he comes to find. "The last temptation is the greatest treason/To do the right thing for the wrong reason," goes the Eliot verse Stephanopoulos keeps on his desk, in a cramped room he coveted for its proximity to the Oval Office. Even when he manages to get the president to save affirmative action or appease other liberal concerns, it all comes back to a base sort of pragmatism. Is Clinton doing it because it's the right thing to do, or for the political benefit? What about George?

Stephanopoulos' candor is this book's greatest asset, candor about the calculating Clinton, his prickly wife Hillary, and especially himself. He recalls a moment in the first campaign when he caught himself telling a small child that her father is "a bad man" for lying about Clinton. Stephanopoulos wants us to see him, and his boss, as good people, but like the title suggests, with some intrinsic flaws.

While the first half of the book is marginally more interesting as a whole, as the Clinton team finds their way into the White House amid bimbo eruptions and fights its own party to pass a budget through Congress, the second half has the book's most interesting figure, the one man Stephanopoulos paints in entirely black hues: Dick Morris.

Morris could be a Dickens character, "a small sausage of a man encased in a green suit with wide lapels, a wide floral tie, and a wide-collared shirt." As unctuous as Uriah Heep, Morris twitters on about his access to the president, all the time sizing our narrator's back for a place to stick his knife. Stephanopoulos, who views Morris as nothing less than a Republican mole, does likewise.

"I have no home. I have no one left to talk to," Morris tells Stephanopoulos at one point.

Get a dog, Stephanopoulos finds himself wishing he had the nerve to reply.

Morris has claimed Stephanopoulos misrepresented him, but I find the depiction very close to the bone from what I've seen of this fellow commentating on Fox News.

There are flaws in the book, like Stephanopoulos' shorthand with the facts. He seems to assume the reader is as well-versed as he is about the Clinton years, which has him skirt over a lot of material or peripherally refer to things like Tammy Wynette being upset with the First Lady as if we all will know the rest of the story. There is also a fatal Yuppie self-absorption in how Stephanopoulos whines about his trials. A lot of people deal with mega-stress. Not so many have a movie actress ready to draw them a bath.

But "All Too Human" is a good read, and buttressed by Bob Woodward's "The Agenda," one gets an immersive sense of life around Bill Clinton in his first term, a time of great possibilities, hopes, and, inevitably, more than a bit of frailty.

This book was particularly appealing to me because I'd found Stephanopoulos a refreshing figure in the '92 campaign, and had seen "The War Room". When he resigned from the Clinton White House I was one of those eagerly awaiting his book. I wasn't disappointed. Certainly some of my impressions of the Clinton style of governing were verified. I'd always felt that this was an administration that governed through reaction rather than an organized agenda. This appeared to be a function of not only Bill Clinton's personality but also of Hillary's. There was no doubt that Pres. Clinton used (and uses) an unusual personal magnetism to substitute for a coherent set of objectives.

I found this book refreshing because Stephanopoulos refrains from being overly self-serving. So many of these tell-all White House memoirs have appeared to serve as an ego-booster for the author. I don't sense this slant at all. Mr. Stephanopoulos has been honest about his own ambitions, lending a qualifying air to his writing.

This book further illustrates that taking a White House job of significance can consume a worker's entire lifestyle. One expects the President to live his job, but what of the inner circle staffers who are quickly forgotten to history, and to us? As with other books, this volume once again testifies to the seductiveness of power, and access to that power.

In the end, it remains a very enjoyable and readable book, being sufficiently gossipy without being bitchy. It will make good reading regardless of the reader's political persuasion.

George Stephanopoulos' "All Too Human" is a very interesting insider's account of the Clinton Presidency. The amount of spin that goes on in today's public life is astounding. Spin has always been there to one extent or another, but the amount of time expended on it from both sides boggles the mind.

Stephanopoulos gives a good account of the more liberal side of the Clinton story. He is often too critical of the President assuming that any move to the political center was a sell out for the sake of polls and not inspired by conviction. Clinton was elected and for several years had preached the gospel of pragmatism; activist government through practical means. He was a prophet of moving the Democratic Party closer to the political center. Above all he wanted to get things done. His is an honest accounting of a flawed person with great potential, and the frustrations of what might have been. Growing up just across the Arkansas state line in Missouri, I watched Clinton's rise on the local news since the early 80s. His convictions are very real and his political skills are amazing. His goal is to make progress and get things done.

This is a really good read however. I couldn't put the book down. Balance it with other views of the Clinton White House, but definately include it if you want to see things from all sides.