Clinton: A Great (If Not Good) American Success Story

First in His Class: A

Biography of Bill Clinton

David Maraniss

Simon & Schuster, $25.00

Last year, when Bob Woodward published The Agenda, about the first year of the Clinton White House, he acknowledged his debt to fellow Washington Post reporter David Maraniss, who, Woodward said, knows Bill Clinton better than any writer working today.

Reading Maraniss' new Clinton biography, First in His Class, it is easy to understand Woodward's praise. Maraniss is not as flashy as his Post counterpart (we never get Wood-wardesque glimpses at what people were "really thinking"), but his reporting is first-class.

Maraniss' documentation and research are solid throughout, but his restraint is his biggest strength. Even when the author appears sorely tempted to dismiss Clinton as a liar, a cheat or a lech, Maraniss refuses. He understands that Clinton's character is bigger, and better than that.

"Whether he was doing something admirable or questionable, I would say the same thing to myself: Well, that's Clinton," Maraniss writes in his preface. "In that sense, I came to like him even when I disliked him and dislike him even when I liked him...He is a big character, whether he is acting big-hearted or small."

That may seem like a paradox, but Clinton, Maraniss shows us, is complicated. He is thoughtful and sensitive about sexuality. Gay friends of the president recall how they were able to express feelings about their sexuality to Clinton and no one else. Yet Clinton's own sexual behavior is hardly exemplary. As governor of Arkansas, Clinton did, in fact, use state troopers to arrange sexual liaisons.

In nailing down that fact, Maraniss may have done his most awe-inspiring piece of reporting. The author was able to get Clinton's former Chief of Staff and chief protector, Betsey Wright, to tell him on-the-record about a conversation they had when he was mulling a bid for the presidency in 1988.

Sitting in her living room, Wright presented Clinton with a list of women who he had allegedly slept with. "Now," she said, "I want you to tell me the truth about every one." By the time the vetting was over, Wright suggested that Clinton not run for president. The facts that would inevitably emerge would be too embarassing for his wife and daughter.

That revelation does not come, however, until near the book's end. First in His Class is not really about Clinton the politician, who most readers already think they know. It is about the man who would become the baby boomers' President of the United States. We learn about his early days. Clinton, it turns out, was not the poor boy from Hope but the middle-class kid from Hot Springs.

He is, in many ways, a sympathetic character. Clinton supports his mother during a difficult divorce from--and remarriage to--the abusive Roger Clinton. He is a good friend who stays in touch with the people he meets.

His letters to his first girlfriend, Denise Hyland, are some of Maraniss' most revealing primary documents. "To be adrift in a stormy sea is no sin," Clinton writes in a letter to console Hyland, who is confused about her future. "Perhaps it is essential to really knowing yourself and seeking your future."

Clinton is smart, and a good listener. Even when he runs for student government at Georgetown University, and seems a bit slick for a campus politician, he is far more thoughtful, professional and sympathetic than any recent Harvard Undergraduate Council candidate. At Georgetown, he also gets a prominent government job working for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. There Clinton, a character who had accepted rules without challenging them, senses forces that lead him to rebellion and reverses his support for the Vietnam War.

Maraniss lets the story linger long, perhaps too long, over Clinton's days as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. But it is an important stop. There we see Clinton's boyhood habit of telling people what they want to hear turn into a propensity for deceit and lies. Clinton seems to struggle genuinely with his conscience, but ultimately he ducks a choice. He is drafted, but pulls strings to get into a ROTC program in which he has no intention of actually participating.

Maraniss never generalizes about Clinton, and the book's account of his rise to prominence is so complete that it is hard for the reader to make generalizations about him either. But Clinton's political ambition, hard work, intelligence and sensitivity combined with a questionable character are constants throughout his life. Each quality is essential. All of those who knew him at different points in his life seem to understand his potential. They sense that Clinton is closer to achieving his goals than they are. He is destined to be First in His Class, even though he never graduated first in any of his classes.

Maraniss's narrative ends with Clinton's announcement of his candidacy for president in 1991. We sense that First in His Class, could have further chapters, but Maraniss, ever cautious, doesn't feel ready to write them yet.

It's a loss to the reader. We want to hear more. First in His Class is a pageturner, but only because it informs rather than titillates. It may not change the minds of those who disagree with Clinton politically, but it does recognize the life story of our much maligned 42nd president for what it is: a great, often ambiguous, but uniquely American success story.