Clinton opens door on turbulent White House times

By Andrew Balls, Alex Barker and Deborah McGregor
Published: June 23 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: June 23 2004 5:00

From the political to the personal, Bill Clinton's memoirs, which officially went on sale in bookshops yesterday, give a glimpse inside the White House through the eyes of a former president whose tenure spanned some turbulent times:

THE 2000 ELECTION

Mr Clinton predictsinMy Life that the Supreme Court decision that handed the election to George W. Bush over Al Gore will go down in history as one of the court's worst decisions. He calls it "appalling" and writes that it is a "dark day when five Republican justices stripped thousands of their fellow Americans of their votes, just because they could".

He also voices frustration with the populist campaign run by Mr Gore, saying his vice-president's slogan of "the people versus the powerful" did not capitalise on the Clinton-Gore years of prosperity and economic growth.

He notes that near the end of the campaign Mr Gore sought to shift emphasis with the slogan "Don't put the prosperity at risk" but by then it was too late.

The former president expresses regret that he had not been invited to be more involved in the 2000 campaign, suggesting that he might have helped swing some states that had voted for him in 1996 - including Arkansas, his home state - into Mr Gore's column.

FOREIGN POLICY

In recounting the negotiations between Yassir Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, Mr Clinton does not hide his emotional commitment to, and frustrations with, the efforts to forge peace in the Middle East. With only 10 weeks remaining in office in late 2000, Mr Clinton writes that he met Mr Arafat in the Oval Office, "held his arm, stared straight at him" and told him there was a chance to reach an agreement with North Korea to end its long-range missile production - but it would mean he would have to make the visit himself rather than play the Middle East peacemaker.

"After all my efforts if Arafat wasn't going to make peace, he owed it to me to tell me," writes Mr Clinton. "He pleaded with me to stay."

There is no doubt, however, where Mr Clinton places the blame for the failure of the final talks. In one of their last conversations Mr Arafat thanked Mr Clinton for his efforts and told him he was a great man. Mr Clinton writes that he replied, "Mr Chairman, I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one."

Mr Clinton calls Mr Arafat a leader who made an "error of historic proportions" and who "simply couldn't make the final jump from revolutionary to statesman".

Mr Clinton also reflects on the mistakes in Somalia in 1993. "The battle of Mogadishu haunted me," he writes of the attempted capture of Mohammed Aidid, the Somali warlord. While approving the use of force - on the recommendation of Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - Mr Clinton contends he "did not envision anything like a daytime assault in a crowded, hostile neighbourhood".

Mr Clinton writes that Mr Powell, speaking to Mr Clinton after he was appointed secretary of state in 2001, also suggested that he would not have approved the operation unless it was executed under cover of darkness.

THE ECONOMY

Mr Clinton'sautobiography provides relatively littlefor economic analysts to pore over on subjects such as the economic boom of the late 1990s; the financial crisis that began with Thailand's currency devaluation in 1997, and which at one point appeared to threaten US financial markets; or his ambitions for Social Security reform - ambitions that were ultimately derailed by his impeachment. My Life contains only a few passing references to the work of Alan Greenspan and his Federal Reserve colleagues.

The book outlines the process through which deficit reduction and fiscal discipline became a central plank of economic policy during the Clinton administration, the internal politics of the economic debate in the early Clinton years, and affirmation of the orthodoxy of the era: that beauty in economic policy lies in the eyes of the bond-market beholders.

Mr Clinton writes that the budget red ink inherited at the start of his first term was "the inevitable result of so-called supply-side economics" - the theory that cutting taxes stimulates growth, producing more tax revenue at lower rates. President George H.W. Bush, Mr Clinton's predecessor, was sceptical of the supply-siders' claims, but the theory has returned to favour under President George W. Bush.