Nigel Hamilton - Bill Clinton: An American Journey

CONTENTS

For Emily and David Stavis-Polstein,
and their sons, Gus and Harry
with love and gratitude

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The genesis of this book goes back to the spring of 2000, when I came over to America to discuss with a number of academic, literary, and personal friends my plan to write a biography of President Clinton.

I wish to thank, right up front, the new literary agent I chose to represent me, after the sad death of Claire Smith of Harold Ober Associates. The agent I selected was Owen Laster, executive director of the William Morris Agency, who felt it was by no means too early to embark on such a work (President Clinton was still in the White House). Owen was convinced that my intentionto recount Bill Clintons life not only as an individuals life saga but as a mirror to the many changes that have taken place in our own generations cultural history since World War IIwould be useful to an American public. I mapped out my vision of the book on a single sheet of paper. Owen did the rest.

The rest boiled down, in the end, to Random House and Bob Loomis, the editor of my previous biography of an American president, JFK: Reckless Youth. As executive editor of Random House, Bob is the doyen of publishing gurus in America. A heavily accented British writer, I am prone to misunderstand certain aspects of American culture, also to the sin of inveterate repetition. I owe enormous gratitude to Bob for seeing the merit of my proposal, then seeing the work through the various stages of research and composition, after which there followed six months of iteration, from first to final draft. That Bob asked, given the ever-mounting size of the manuscript, if Random might publish the work in two parts, was the answer to this authors dream. That he had the patience to guide me through the preparation of this first volume was equally so.

To Owen Laster and to Bob Loomis: merci infinimentas to my stalwart and loyal British agent, Bruce Hunter of David Higham Associates, and my British publishing editor, Mark Booth of Random Century.

I owe, also, a great debt of gratitude to my adopted family in Newton, Massachusetts: Emily and David Stavis-Polstein, and their two sons, Gus and Harry, who took me into the bosom of their householdor rather, their attic suite!and nurtured me like a prodigal (if overgrown) son, or friend, until I was firmly on my feet and ready to move into my own quarters in Cambridge, not far from Harvard Yard. In that Newton attic I had brought work on my revised life of the British World War II general, The Full Monty, to near completion in the spring of 2000, and it was in those mansard quarters, having finished the Monty manuscript, that I began work on Bill Clinton: An American Journey in the late fall of that year, as well as in their beautiful old Maine farmhouse. It is to them that I dedicate this book.

Simultaneously, as Professor of Biography on leave from De Montfort University, Leicester, England, I was welcomed back to America with open arms by the director of the John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Professor Edmund Beard. It was as a John F. Kennedy Scholar and a fellow of the McCormack Institute that I had researched and written my Kennedy volume. Once again as a visiting fellow of the McCormack Institute, I am indebted, a decade later, to Ed and his colleagues for their rocklike support, help, and encouragement. To Dr. Beard and to Sandy Blanchette, the McCormacks indefatigable administrator, my heartfelt thanks. Also to my McCormack postgraduate research assistant, Katie Griffin, who helped set up my office and website, arranged my interview schedules, and assisted in scrupulous footnote checking and copyright clearing, my lasting gratitude. The staff of the Institutemost of all Candyce Carragher, Jamie Ennis, Mike MacPhee, and former staffer Maureen Mitchelldeserve especial mention, as do those McCormack colleagues who have encouraged, listened to, debated with, criticized, and cajoled the damned Brit into producing a (hopefully) better book, including Dick Hogarty, Lou DiNatale, Ian Menzies, Sheila Gagnon, Padraig OMalley, Donna Haig Friedman, Carol Hardy-Fanta, Erica White, John McGah, Carol Cardozo, Robert Wood, Margery ODonnell, Phyllis Freeman, Charles Cnudde, Mary Grant, Joe McDonough, Elizabeth Sherman, Elaine Werby, Ajume Wingo, Consuela Greene, Erika Kates, Michelle Hayes, Miranda Hooker, Michael Stone, Carrie Peters, Tatjana Meschede, Charles Ndungu, Jennifer Raymond, Mary Stevenson, Jain Ruvidich-Higgins, Pat Peterson, and Julia Tripp. Professor Al Cardarelli was my earlyand unrelentingsociohistorical mentor, while Matt Vasconcellos created the original McCormack website for the work, and Andi Sutedja provided technical assistance.

I must thank, alongside the staff and fellows of the John W. McCormack Institute, I must thank the staff of the Healey Library and Computer Services department, UMass Boston, most especially Bill Baer, as well as Professors Clive Foss (now at Georgetown University), William Percy, and Paul Bookbinder of the UMass Boston history department, and Lois Rudnik of American studies. Former chancellor Sherry Penney was most encouraging, as were colleagues in many disciplines in the Faculty Club. All surviving errors of understanding and scholarship are, I hasten to emphasize, my own.

Outside UMass Boston I have been privileged to enjoy the company, companionship, intellectual and interdisciplinary encouragement, and constant critical sparring of a number of friends who have added enormously to my understanding of the United States and the cultural issues of twentieth-century America. They include the distinguished author Larry Leamer, and his wife, Vesna, who helped start me on my new biographical journey; my distinguished fellow biographers, Lt. Col. Carlo DEste and his wife, Shirley, and Edmund and Sylvia Morris; Dr. David Chanoff, veteran collaborative author, and his wife, Liisa; history professors Claudia Liebeskind and Rafe Blaufarb; Dr. Mark Schneider, historian, and Professor Judith Beth Cohen, English teacher and writer; Dr. Paul Hans, psychiatrist, and Alexandra Vozick-Hans, counselor; Dr. Sam Rofman, psychiatrist, and Elaine Rofman, nurse-educator; Richard Feldman, photographer, and Judy Rosenberg, bakery tycoon and author; Captain Ilya Schneider, member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and his wife, Rachel, computer consultant; Raynel Shepard, educator; psychologist Katherine Reeder; architect Janice Ann Crotty; Sam Pitroda, IT entrepreneur and philanthropist; and many, many others over the past two years whose insights have contributed to my cornucopia of American lenses. For the remaining misperceptions and misinterpretations, I take complete responsibility.

In Arkansas I was privileged to make a new set of friends and acquaintancesindeed without them this work would be immeasurably poorer. First, Dr. George and Gail Hamilton invited me to stay at their Little Rock home, overlooking the Arkansas River, while conducting my interviews in the stateeven flying me, on one occasion, to Hope, in Georges plane. Author and attorney Griffin Stockley also welcomed me into his life and home. Dr. Bobby Roberts, director of the Central Arkansas Public Libraries in Little Rock; Tom Dillard, director of the Butler Center; and Dr. John Ferguson, the director of the State Historical Commission at the capital, and his staff, were enormously helpful and generous with their time, while Rod Lorenzen of Lorenzen & Co. helped supply the many books I needed. Audrey Burtrum-Stanley not only showed me around the city but consented to read the manuscript for factual and other errorsa task she has fulfilled far beyond the call of friendship, as did Jane Kirschner, a Georgetown classmate of Bill Clinton. Kerry Kirschner, mayor of Sarasota, also furnished me with a video record of Georgetown classmates and kindly consented to be interviewed.