I suppose one understands Clinton's instinct: he wanted to preserve these memories for his own use. But I don't understand why Branch agreed to these terms, and he never explains why. I can imagine Clinton thinking that he may have said something untoward, calling Bashar Al-Assad a shithead or something (as it seems he might have, and not without reason), and wanted it kept from the record. But at the very least Branch could have negotiated an arrangement whereby he could have read through the transcriptions and, with Clinton's consent, used much larger chunks of Clinton's voice than he used. Branch is the reverse-McGinniss: he seems to have gotten so interested in his subject that he surrendered to him to a greater degree than any serious journalist or annalist or historian should have.
There are, certainly, some illuminations in The Clinton Tapes, and a mother lode of gratifyingly un-profound ones. (Clinton wanted Gore to choose Barbara Mikulski as his running mate!) One of my favorite stories from the book, one that really pulls back the curtain on the rarefied but bizarre world in which heads of state live, involves Clinton's meeting with then–Chinese premier Jiang Zemin in Seattle in 1993. The two of them sat across from each other at a small table with only their interpreters. Rather than engaging in colloquy with the world's most powerful person, Jiang read studiously from a text "about the glorious history of China and the folly of attempts to influence her internal affairs." On and on he droned. At length, an exasperated Clinton interrupted. Look, he said. I don't want to meddle in your internal affairs. I don't even mind your prisons.
I plan on putting more people in ours myself. All you need to do, Clinton confided, is to make a few gestures about human rights, and here are a couple of suggestions. Clinton thought that he had broken the ice. But when he finished, "Jiang simply resumed his speech."
The book is substance-heavy (this is good) and covers every imaginable subject. Since Branch knew Jean-Bertrand Aristide previously, there is maybe a little too much Haiti. There is an intense showdown in 1999 between Clinton and Nawaz Sharif over a Kashmir crisis, initiated by Pakistan, that had flared up at the time. Clinton considered an India-Pakistan standoff the most likely flashpoint for nuclear war in the world, and thus the conflict was one of the most important issues on his plate. He tells Branch that at one point during tense Blair House negotiations, he made all aides leave the room: just him and Sharif, eyeball to eyeball, in what he regarded as "his most ferocious encounter in politics--bar none."
Around the Sharif talks, Clinton did attend two Women's World Cup soccer matches--this was the year of Mia Hamm's celebrated kick--and then, in quick succession, the funerals of John F. Kennedy Jr. and King Hassan of Morocco. All this while all hell was breaking loose in New York over Hillary's interview in the debut issue of Talk magazine, over which the media accused her of excusing Bill's infidelities because of his childhood traumas. The Clinton Tapes does convey the feeling of what a president's life is like, standing on a moving walkway as it goes faster, faster, and faster, and ducking as the slings and arrows start coming at you.
We know a lot about those slings and arrows, but if Bill Clinton's innermost thoughts on the Lewinsky scandal are what you want out of The Clinton Tapes, you will be disappointed. There is a reason for this. Originally, Clinton and Branch both strove to keep these conversations secret. But inevitably word of them got around, the implication of which was that they might be subpoenaed. The tapes weren't, but because his name appeared regularly in White House visitor logs, Branch himself was subpoenaed by Al D'Amato's Senate Banking Committee. FBI agents visited Branch's home in 1996 and grilled him about whether he had ever seen some legal billing records or anything that might have resembled them. For these kinds of reasons, Branch writes, Clinton did not dwell much on tape about the substance of any of these salacious matters.
But he did talk a lot about the coverage of them. The New York Times and The Washington Post "have corrupted themselves over Whitewater," he says at one point. "Don't get me started." And later, as impeachment proceeded, while Clinton did not deny that he messed up in rather a large way with Lewinsky, he mused that while Leon Jaworski's raw evidence against Richard Nixon had never been leaked, Starr was planting seedlings all over town: "I trusted the press. I trusted Congress. I trusted the courts. I was wrong on all counts." The day of his Senate acquittal found him in the Treaty Room, re-arranging books and recommending to Branch Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, a history of race relations in Atlanta. Toward the end came the big blow-up with Al Gore, much reported since the book's release, in which Clinton tells Gore that he could have swung up to four states if Gore had let him campaign in them, while Gore angrily blames Clinton for his defeat and holds Clinton responsible for the Buddhist fund-raising controversy, which Branch says Gore thought of as "the worst experience of his life." The conclusion finds Branch trudging up to Chappaqua, dining with Clinton at a French bistro where Branch is surprised to find the waitress paying more attention to him than to Clinton. Don't worry, Clinton said; she had already propositioned him, and, for good measure, Hillary and Chelsea, too. Ha ha. (It turned out that the woman had some mental issues.)
Branch began this project skeptically, feeling that since their days together in Texas he had taken the path of integrity, while Clinton had sold himself to a world of corruption and compromise. By the book's end, he has reversed this view. His identification with Clinton's opinions, especially about the media and Whitewater and Lewinsky, is thorough.
