The CLINTON ENIGMA : A FOUR AND A HALF MINUTE SPEECH REVEALS THIS PRESIDENT'S ENTIRE LIFE [Hardcover]

David Maraniss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 1998

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Maraniss, regarded by his peers as the nation's leading expert on Bill Clinton, sat in a darkened television studio in New York on the night of August 17 and watched the president deliver his curious apologia confessing that he had misled the nation about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. As Maraniss, the author of "First in His Class", the highly acclaimed Clinton biography, listened to the president's words that night, it struck him that he had heard them all before, though never in one speech, and that in those four and a half minutes Clinton had revealed all the contradictory qualities of his tumultuous life and political career.

In this insightful new book, drawing from the biography and his writings for "The Washington Post", Maraniss dissects the speech as a revelation of the president's entire life. Alternately reckless and cautious, righteous and repentant, evasive and forgetful, relying on family and friends to protect him, affirming his faith in God and then turning to polls to tell him what the public would tolerate, communicating with the public over the heads of pundits and professionals, transforming his personal trauma into a political cause by attacking his and his wife's enemies, asking us all to put his troubles behind us, Clinton combined all his weaknesses and strengths in that one brief address.

In the first section of "The Clinton Enigma", Maraniss reflects as a biographer on his curious but revealing dealings with Clinton over the years. Then, after Clinton has spoken, Maraniss dissects the words and interprets the deeper meaning paragraph by paragraph, to show the roots and echoes from the president's past and to explain why Clinton acts and speaks as he does. With Bill Clinton, Maraniss writes, past is always prologue.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On August 17, 1998, after testifying to a grand jury put together by independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr about the nature of his relationship with a young woman named Monica Lewinsky, President Bill Clinton addressed the United States in a four-and-a-half-minute televised speech. One of the people watching was Clinton biographer and NBC commentator David Maraniss. In The Clinton Enigma, Maraniss uses the rhetorical device of "dissecting" the speech to rehash many of the usual negativities attached to Clinton: the lying, the quibbling over legal definitions, the extramarital affairs, the dysfunctional childhood (including some admittedly unconfirmed, but apparently still worth mentioning, rumors of illegitimacy in the circumstances of his birth).

Maraniss does include some remarks that serve to disassociate himself from what First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton once called "a vast right-wing conspiracy" out to smear the president's reputation, but The Clinton Enigma is ultimately cut from the same cloth as such other instant commentaries as Jerome Levin's The Clinton Syndrome and William J. Bennett's The Death of Outrage (and, to be ideologically balanced, James Carville's attack on Starr, And the Horse He Rode in On). The book is far more revealing about its author than its purported subject. --Ron Hogan

Review

What lends Mr. Maraniss's observations added interest is his ability to put the speech (and its subtext) in context with Mr. Clinton's entire life by drawing upon the enormous amount of material he accumulated in the course of writing First in His Class. -- The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1ST edition (October 26, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684862964
• ISBN-13: 978-0684862965
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,329,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post. He is the winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and has been a Pulitzer finalist two other times for his journalism and again for They Marched Into Sunlight, a book about Vietnam and the sixties. The author also of bestselling works on Bill Clinton, Vince Lombardi, and Roberto Clemente, Maraniss is a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He and his wife, Linda, live in Washington, DC, and Madison, Wisconsin.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars OK quickie, but read _First in His Class_, October 2, 2003

By 

John (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The CLINTON ENIGMA : A FOUR AND A HALF MINUTE SPEECH REVEALS THIS PRESIDENT'S ENTIRE LIFE (Hardcover)

David Maraniss is a real pro and I recommend his books and articles, but I wish he would not have written this little book. It is an interesting idea -- to extrapolate a man's life from a four minute speech -- but I found it to be somewhat self-serving.

For example, Mr. Maraniss makes something of a to-do about the fact that the president of the United States would not make time for him. Mr. Maraniss had been critical of Clinton in some ways, and that might have dampened the president's enthusiasm for meeting with him; but Maraniss is only an author. Bill Clinton was president of the United States.

One other little example: Mr. Maraniss makes something of a deal out of the fact that Clinton once said to him, "Nice tie," and then later someone else told him (D.M.) that that remark should be interpreted as a "F- you." Hm, a pretty far-out interpretation.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Read the full-length biography, May 11, 2000

By 

Todd Winer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The CLINTON ENIGMA : A FOUR AND A HALF MINUTE SPEECH REVEALS THIS PRESIDENT'S ENTIRE LIFE (Hardcover)

For readers with only a passing interesting in Bill Clinton, this is a short, succint book that you can complete in a day. But for readers looking for bigger game, read "First in His Class" by the same author. That book is the best Clinton biography on the market, covering his life from childhood to his 1992 presidential run. This book was published just before Clinton's impeachment by the House. The author gives some new insights, going through the president's August 17 confession line-by-line, and interprets its meaning. You sense Mr. Maraniss's frustration and obvious disappointment with his subject. But at the same time, he maintains a hue of fairness and objectivity that is badly needed when compared to other Clinton books. Mr. Maraniss will help you understand Bill Clinton, but the truth is that no person can fully understand this true "enigma."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A "full biography" for those with short attention span, June 3, 2001

By 

ptitchitza (Leiden, Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The CLINTON ENIGMA : A FOUR AND A HALF MINUTE SPEECH REVEALS THIS PRESIDENT'S ENTIRE LIFE (Hardcover)

Maraniss did such a good job in his full-scope Clinton biography ("First In His Class") that if you've read it you'd (almost) be able to come up with a summary of your own to explain his 4-minute speech, which is nominally the subject of the Clinton Enigma. There's very little new in this book to be missed if you have not read it. What is new is in the first 13 pages (Chapters 1-4 of the first part of the book), where Maraniss mentions his own experiences with Clinton (or rather: the lack of them) when trying to arrange an interview with him, immediately prior and also after his biography was published. The manners and maneuvers Clinton and his aides applied and Maraniss' reaction provide a valuable supplement to understanding Clinton, but also Maraniss.

The weakness of this book for those who have read the biography is also an advantage for those who haven't and if you are not as interested in Clinton to devote yourself to reading 500 pages of the biography you will appreciate its summarized version in the Clinton Enigma.