In ‘Citizen,’ Bill Clinton Gives His Side Of The Story
“I couldn’t sleep for two years after the [2016] election. I was so angry, I wasn’t fit to be around,” Bill Clinton writes with rare self-awareness in his new memoir. “I apologize to all those who endured my outbursts of rage which lasted for years and bothered or bored people who thought it pointless to rehash things that couldn’t be changed.”
“Citizen” subordinates the rage to reason, and the rehash includes many ingredients that have been ignored or intentionally distorted by critics on both the left and right. We hear his side of the story on such topics as the controversial crime and welfare bills, the Wall Street deregulation of the 1990s and the Clinton Foundation, which has been dogged by questions. Although the book is full of humble and not-so-humble brags, the authentic Clinton comes through: smart, charming and — most of the time — convincing. This is the most unvarnished view we will probably get of a former president, now 78, who doesn’t care if you think he’s too wonky about his good deeds and too defensive when trying to set the record straight.
It’s not surprising that Clinton is still furious at former FBI director James B. Comey for insisting during the 2016 campaign that Hillary Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling her emails and for briefly announcing a new investigation of her just before the election. He makes a good case that the New York Times embarrassed itself by getting in bed with a right-wing muckraker (author Peter Schweizer) and grossly over-covering the emails story. Clinton argues persuasively that a combination of Comey, the Times and Russian meddling cost Hillary her six-point lead in late October and gave the world President Donald Trump.
But 2016 is only one of many things that still tick Clinton off. He’s annoyed that he was pressed on NBC News to apologize personally — instead of generally — to Monica Lewinsky (whose good works he praises); eager to confirm that he never visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island and, contrary to rumors, never ditched his Secret Service detail or staff when traveling on Epstein’s plane in 2002 and 2003; and scathing about Republicans changing their tunes after hiding behind their desks on Jan. 6, 2021. “Trump asked them the question we’ve all heard in bad jokes,” he writes. “‘Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’ Those who looked to Trump and said, ‘You, Master,’ lived to fight another day.”
But mostly the former president focuses on the positive. In his first interview after leaving office in 2001, he told me that he planned to use his “convening power” to make a better world. And he has. Even when he fails, he’s determined to “get caught trying,” his apt description of his postpresidential approach.
But where Jimmy Carter is lionized for his post-presidency, Clinton has been more often maligned. That’s partly because, unlike Carter, he has done well financially (thanks to paid speeches) while doing good, and partly because of debunked charges that the Clinton Global Initiative was just a cover for using Hillary’s position as the early 2008 front-runner and, later, as secretary of state to rake in cash. The messy distractions have obscured Clinton’s talent for forging partnerships that save and improve millions of lives.
This inspiring story began after a 2001 earthquake killed some 20,000 people in India, the first of several natural disasters that brought out the best in Clinton. He helped establish the American India Foundation, which built houses, schools and hospitals, created job training programs and became a template for his role as a kind of global coordinator in chief. After both the 2004 Christmastime tsunami in South Asia and, just months later, Hurricane Katrina in the United States, Clinton joined with former president George H.W. Bush in spearheading U.N. relief efforts. The two men, who had squared off in the 1992 election, formed an unusual bond.
In 2010, a huge earthquake killed some 200,000 people and destroyed much of Haiti, where the Clintons had gone on their honeymoon 35 years earlier. As president, Clinton almost invaded it. After the quake, still fascinated by the place, Clinton made 38 trips there. Despite corruption, cronyism and government incapacity there, he’s proud of what he and others accomplished: “Donald Trump was wrong; there are no ‘s__hole’ countries.” And Clinton hasn’t forgotten about the Trump campaign incorrectly claiming that he and Hillary were somehow involved in the suicide of a former Haitian government official.
Clinton’s discursive style reads in places like a warmhearted Wikipedia. But the brief digressions — on things such as the problems of the Puerto Rican electric utility system and the caloric content of beverage options in high school cafeterias — are usually welcome. Although we don’t get much irony — and never have with Clinton — it’s fun to hear how Stephen Colbert taught him to use social media, and sad to read that he cried for a half-hour after hearing of the death of Paul Farmer, the renowned humanitarian physician who helped build a hospital in Rwanda, where Clinton worked hard to atone for sitting on his hands during the genocide there when he was president.
Clinton’s greatest achievement since leaving the White House has been his successful effort to reduce the extremely high cost of antiretroviral AIDS medications, which eventually turned HIV from a death sentence into a chronic disease. Under the leadership of Clinton and Ira Magaziner, the Clinton Health Access Initiative worked with drug companies and some 125 countries to push the generic price of treatment down to 37 cents a day, setting the stage for foundations and government programs to begin pouring big money into saving millions of lives. Soon, the Clintons took what they learned and applied it to other health policy and environmental challenges.
Clinton didn’t invent the idea of requiring attendees at fancy nonprofit conferences to make specific commitments instead of just yakking. But, starting in 2005, he used that structure to help change global philanthropy. I remember being struck by how few reporters joined me in covering the Clinton Global Initiative, which takes place in New York every September. Some in the press were suspicious of conflicts of interest, particularly when Russian oligarchs began posing as philanthropists, an episode Clinton skips in the book. But CGI was more than on the level. Clinton reports that more than 3,600 commitments (on such things as water purification packets, micro-lending and clean cookstoves) improved the lives of roughly 500 million people in 180 countries.
Jonathan Alter is the author of “American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial—and My Own.”
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