'The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House'
By Bob Woodward
Simon and Schuster; $24
To hear Bob Woodward tell it, President Clinton's first months in the White House were chaotic, disorganized and filled with tension between his economic advisers pushing deficit reduction and his former campaign staff pushing candidate Clinton's social agenda on welfare reform, health care and public investments. Woodward, the assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, is the author of "The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House," his "inside" review of the first 18 months of the Clinton presidency.
Woodward reports that the president often exploded in anger at his staff for confused or poor-quality work and that Hillary Rodham Clinton bitterly criticized the White House staff for forcing Clinton to become "Mechanic in Chief." According to Woodward, the first lady railed at the staff that she spent more time picking a family movie than they spent considering strategy.
The book is based on a series of "deep background" interviews with virtually all of the significant officials at the White House, including Clinton himself. Woodward's introduction defensively notes that it is not intended to serve as a definitive history. That's good. It's not. Woodward instead aims to fill that gap between daily news reporting and, later, more scholarly efforts at history. But Woodward falls short of even that limited goal.
The book is filled with direct quotations or descriptions of what one or another of the players saw or thought during the events under discussion - remarkably similar in style to the pseudo-fictional biography of Sen. Ted Kennedy, "The Last Brother," released (and widely panned) last year by Joe McGinniss. The difference, Woodward insists, is that his material comes directly from interviews with the participants - pure hearsay rather than pure fiction. He attempts a preemptive strike against criticism by pompously declaring that his notes and tapes will be deposited with Yale University, to be opened in 40 years.
The book focuses almost exclusively on the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing to pass the administration's budget. From presidential promises and cajoling, to outright shouting matches between the president and reluctant Democrats, Woodward purports to deliver the inside story.
But this "review" of the first 18 months is absurdly incomplete. Woodward barely even mentions some of the most critical events - both positive and negative - of the first 18 months. NAFTA, the Family Leave Act, Whitewater, the Lani Guanier fiasco, the withdrawn nomination of Zoe Baird as attorney general, gays in the military, the appointment of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and virtually every aspect of foreign policy all get short shrift.
Even on the budget process itself, the book is remarkably uneven and choppy. Presidential adviser George Stephanopolous, for example, was plainly a favorite source. Many key events are recounted from his view, to the exclusion of others'. Woodward's newspaper-style chapters lurch from one participant to the next, describing what are often mundane or unremarkable meetings. The book, indeed, often has the feel of a rough cut-and-paste from a few dozen separate interviews.
The book, to paraphrase Sidney Blumenthal, is all overture and no opera. Is it really remarkable that the first Democratic administration in 12 years was disorganized when it took over? Or that a president can be angered by sloppy staff work? Woodward, for all his tsk-tsking, fails even to give credit where credit is due: Clinton did forge a majority and pass a budget for the first time in years. And NAFTA. And the Family Leave Act. Maybe the legislative process was messy - all arm-twisting, anguished compromise, and shouting. But that's not news; that how legislation gets passed.
