With his book, My Life, appearing at a critical stage of the US presidential campaign, Bill Clinton can play an important role in determining the outcome of the elections, writes Mohamed Sid-Ahmed Appearing just a few months before the US presidential elections, former president Bill Clinton's long-awaited autobiography, My Life, which hit the stands on 22 June, is sure to influence the choice of which of the two candidates, the incumbent President George W Bush or his Democratic rival John Kerry, will be America's next president. On its first day, the book broke all sales records for a non-fiction book, attesting to the hold Clinton continues to exert on the American people's imagination four years after leaving office. A colourful figure who rose from an underprivileged background to become the most powerful man in the world, he embodies the American dream -- even if he never managed to get rid of what he calls the "parallel lives" that have always tormented him. The road from his unhappy childhood in Arkansas, one of the poorest states in America, to the pinnacle of power in Washington was long and arduous. Born William Jefferson Blythe III on 19 August 1946 to a travelling salesman father who was killed in a car accident three months before his birth, Clinton was raised by his mother, Virginia Kelley, in the small farming community of Hope (population 6000). In the book, Clinton pays tribute to his mother, who struggled to support her small family on her meagre earnings as a hospital nurse. He also praises his grandfather who owned a small grocery store. At a time when racial segregation in the conservative southern states was at its worst, he treated his black customers with great respect and often allowed them to buy their groceries on credit. It was from him that the young Clinton learned to respect his black fellow-Americans; his special bond with and sympathy for the downtrodden Black community prompted Nobel laureate Toni Morrison to describe him as "America's first black president!" Life for the little boy became even harder when his mother went off to finish her studies in New Orleans, leaving her four-year old son in the care of his grandparents. There she met and married Roger Clinton, the twice- divorced owner of an automobile showroom. At first, he was a welcome addition to the family, a good stepfather who treated his wife's son well and won the love of the boy, who insisted on calling himself Bill Clinton. Gradually however Roger Clinton began to drink heavily, eventually becoming a violent alcoholic. Things came to a head when, in a fit of drunken anger, he shot at and narrowly missed his wife. The incident and the subsequent arrest of the man he looked upon as his father were deeply traumatic for the young Clinton. But in the face of such adversity, Bill Clinton not only persevered with his studies but excelled academically, earning a Rhodes scholarship in 1968. On his return from Oxford he went on to study law at Yale University, where he met fellow law student Hillary Rodham. They married in 1975, and although she managed to calm down the demons in his inner life, he was not able to overcome them completely. They came back to haunt him first with the Paula Jones affair, then with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The Lewinsky story, which dominated the American political landscape in 1998 and nearly led to his impeachment, is addressed at length in the book. Clinton admits that what he did with Monica was "stupid and unethical", something of which he was so deeply ashamed that he tried to deny it ever happened, lying to his wife, to his daughter, to his friends, to journalists and to the American people. It was a nightmare that brought him back to his "parallel lives". To save his marriage, Clinton underwent marriage counselling with Hillary for a whole year. He also regularly consulted priests and clergymen. This gave him the opportunity to rediscover his wife and put an end to his "parallel lives". And as he adopted a particularly severe approach to overcome his personal flaws, he adopted a stand no less exacting towards his political enemies whom he accused of taking advantage of the Lewinsky affair to launch a right wing offensive aimed at destroying both his person and his presidency. Tracing the history of the new Republican right back to Nixon and Reagan, Clinton talks of a "cabal of right-wing operatives" that hounded him throughout his presidency, led by such prominent Clinton- bashers as Newt Gingrich, Kenneth Starr and Kush Limbaugh. Significantly, he does not include Bush the father among the right-wing conspirators targeted in his book, but considers him a moderate Republican -- actually, another kind of political figure. As to the incumbent president, although Clinton avoids lumping him with the new Republican right wingers he attacks in the book, it is Bush's neo-conservative supporters who are now arguing that Clinton was responsible for failing to prevent the 11 September attacks. A question now being put forward not only by Republican observers but even by Democratic analysts is whether Clinton underestimated the terrorist threat and misread the significance of the bombing of two US embassies in Africa only a short period before 9/11. True, Clinton ordered raids to be launched against Afghanistan and Sudan, but the raids did not seem to be indicative of his understanding of the scope of the threat. Moreover, to what extent did Clinton succeed in helping find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Until the very last day of his presidency, Clinton was tireless in his efforts to bring about a breakthrough. But he failed and placed the full blame for his failure on Arafat's shoulders. On the day Clinton's term came to an end, Arafat hailed him as an "outstanding personality". The latter answered: "Mr President, I am not an outstanding personality, because I failed. And my failure is due to you." Clinton still enjoys wide popularity among the rank and file of the Democratic Party and is throwing his full weight behind their candidate for the presidency, John Kerry. Unlike Al gore, who chose to distance himself from his former boss in the 2000 elections, Kerry has welcomed Clinton's support as an asset to his campaign. But if Clinton's charisma works in his favour among the Democrats, it has the opposite effect on the conservative forces in America, who have resumed their smear campaign against him, decrying not only his moral laxity but now also his political incompetence for failing to predict and prevent 9/11. Clinton is offering more than moral support to Kerry; late at night, the two men discuss the campaign strategy and Clinton, with the experience of two successful election campaigns behind him, offers valuable advice to the presidential hopeful. Coming as he does from a privileged background, Kerry is very different from Clinton. He received the Democratic Party nomination not so much because he is the most authentic representative of the various trends within the party but because he stands a better chance of beating Bush at the polls than the other Democratic candidates. For the time being, the publicity campaign for Clinton's book is helping Kerry's campaign for the presidency. The book evokes memories of a more prosperous and kinder time when the economy was thriving and America's relations with the international community, including the Arab world, were far smoother than they have since become. If Kelly is elected, will his policies be closer to those of Clinton or of Bush? Will he offer an alternative to the Bush vision of a Greater Middle East? Clinton supports Kerry, but has so far avoided attacking Bush, a courtesy Bush has reciprocated by describing Clinton as a man of particular warmth. The mutual restraint shown by the two men may be the most civilised mode of political discourse, but is it the most effective way of ensuring a Democratic victory in November?
