Few housekeeping announcements before we get going. Most of you have been to events here, see you know the drill. If anybody doesnt, michael will speak about his book for about the first half of the program and then he will be happy to take questions. We only have microphone up tonight. Its right here. Hopefully you. Hopefully you can make it to microphone. This is being recorded. So its helpful to hear the question so we ask that you try to make it right appear if you do want to ask him something. If you have a cell phone or other noisemaking advice it but you could turn off, now would be a good time to do that. At the end of the event we have plenty copies of the book, its a cool looking book. Plenty of copies upfront so you can go get one and have michael signed it appeared the stable. If. If you would not mind just folding up the chairs and putting them to the site. That will expedite the signing and expedite an easier exit and make our staff happy. We appreciate that. I want to make to event announcements. We have been hosting a series of teaching and starting this month. We have had to on Civil Liberties someone on womens rights. Were nailing down the date now on immigration reform. Followed by going to try for one per month. If your interested check our website and sign up for email if you are [inaudible] it already. They been well attended. I dont know how many have been to them. They been extremely well attended and quite spirited spend an interesting project that we are very happy about we encourage you to attend. On a lighter note we want to call your attention to some new items downstairs our coffeehouse and wine bar. They have just initiated a dessert called campfire toast. A cousin of smores, quite delicious. The recipe of the month is the korean rice bowl which is also excellent. We continue to have changing literary seasonal drinks and a staff favorite is the sniffle crusher, so check out the menu items and of course we will have coffee and local wines and beers. I will try to resist making a comment about my alcoholic intake as of the last week. Moving on. Its a pleasure to hope host michael a politics and prose tonight. In the month that is featured a president ial inauguration back tobacco with one of the biggest social protest marches in the country we cannot seem to get enough of politics and politicians around here. Indeed, michael will be amplifying our political discussion. Im sure many of you know him as a special correspondent to the daily in addition to writing extensively about politics and Current Affairs is editorinchief of democracy and was previously the executive editor of the american prospect for the guardian. The author of three books including what hell be discussing tonight which is called simply enough, bill clinton. For the record, i have to mention because im introducing him in this book that i was once a president ial speechwriter for bill clinton and for many years was the cheapest speech writer for his wife. But im very unbiased and objective. Michaels book is the latest installment in the american series thats published by times books and edited by two historians, theyre pretty much think we have counted correctly in the sun brings the total to 43 of the now 45 president s. We are missing barack obama for obvious reasons and donald trump fraud obvious reasons. So congratulations on filling the big hole with bill clinton. I just want just want to say that hes in various steamed company among the writers who has produced the biographies. Distinguished up academics and even a few politicians with authors but its without a doubt true that he drew the shortest straw of all this is been commented widely at this point, you had to write a biography not only of a president who still live and has had an enormous amount of ink devoted to him, but whose high points and low points are quite voluminous enough to priest sent a challenge to anyone whos trying to write his story in brief. He has written a thorough, clear and extremely focused portrait of bill clinton in exactly 150 pages so you deserve a medal and we congratulate you. We are mostly just terribly excited and delighted to have you with us tonight. And to have this opportunity to remember back to the ancient past when bill clinton was in the white house. So please welcome michael. [applause] all my. Good evening everyone. Thank you. It was for those very kind words. Thank most of all for doing this , keeping this Great Institution alive. I know time is very particularly close to david and im sure you knew them as well. Its very nice to know what this wonderful person is in such good hands. Its nice to see this humbling turnout to come see if theyll dependent talk about an irrelevant politician. We come from being called that roughly about 11 to thousand times in the days after the election because i predicted a different outcome i had a company in predicting that outcome. Irrelevant president , im joking, i dont think so. He was a very consequential president , but his stock is at a low point right now. I think it makes it our little adventure here tonight a little bit more interesting maybe just to examine bill clinton from that perspective and through that lens and talk about where his legacy stands today. And worst of them. And where it stands on stood the course of the past 15 months his wife was running for president we all thought she was going to be the next president and consequently he stands with her today not been the president. Where here but under very different circumstances that i imagined we would be. I think in 2015 they asked me to write this installment i was flattered in the first instance in a lot of distinguished people have contributed to the series. And i was happy to join that roster. So i said yes, but for that reason, the back of my mind i think it will commercially this could work out pretty well. We could put this book out on january 2017 and what might be happening. It might be a lot of renewed interest in this man and this couple although it didnt work out that way but theres still enough interest in him for you to come out here tonight. So let me, before i get into talking about the book and im gonna do a short reading selection from it its okay to read a short. Yes. I will say that we must acknowledge current reality and i assume some of your interested and may be asking about bill clinton but maybe some of you are interested in asking about other things that are going on that were all kind of either obsessed with her panicked about right now. So if you want to do that thats fine we can use a q a session however you want to use it. All right. So. The thing that i learned the main thing that i learned about bill clinton as i was researching this book and i guess i had known but had forgotten. Is that he had this reputation this is a positive thing i learned, he had this reputation for being very poll driven. Its all they set about him on cable to be. All he does is study the polls and he does what what the polls tell him to do. Well you had to some extent on some things. But actually if you dig deeper, no. He followed his compass. Sometimes i agree with that and personally sometimes i do not. But he followed his own belief system more than he was given credit for at the time. He did some unpopular things but it was pretty hard to do. And he should be recognized for. I think his intervention in haiti in 1994 which four which im sure many of you will remember, that was a hard thing to do. To remember the circumstances . They had won the presidency of haiti and he was a man of the last ten was going to seize all the land and distributed to the people saw obviously he was a threat and dispose by the military. They said dont to remember that phrase i probably havent heard in a long time and the people of haiti were desperate for someone to do something to help them restore their rightful president. And the only someone who could do something was the United States of america. So so the cold war had just ended in here was a president using the power of the American Military not to install a dictator as the dictate United States had done for the better part of the previous 40 years. In guatemala and iran and wherever else. But to install someone the United States really had no such interest. And is not the type of person we supported during the cold war. You know it didnt necessarily end well. We did not turn the country into a heaven on earth or anything like that. But it was a brave thing for clinton to do. The military didnt like it, the public didnt like it, but, but it was the right thing to do. Another thing ill points on a domestic front is his detail of the partial birth abortion bill later in his term, 1999 i think it was. Which was just to set the stage for you little bit, the congress in republican hands had passed a bill outline with the republicans called partialbirth abortion which was medically its called intact violation of extraction. Its a lateterm procedure. It is quite a gruesome procedure but its one thats usually only used to save the mothers life. Public opinion was strongly against clinton and republicans were screaming murder and all this kind of thing. And a lot of democrats but he stood firm. And he made the veto of the bill that the republicans had passed. There were more things like that that he didnt quite get credit for in the time that he served. Because he had this slick willie reputation that just went all the way back to the governors mansion. Now, Hillary Clinton from the various point of today and thinking about what happens to his reputation over the course of the last 15 or so monster in the course of the president ial campaign, the obvious thing with conventional wisdom would be that he really took a hit and not from the right, but from the left. From the sanders wing of the party. Sanders subjected bill clintons record and by extension, Hillary Clinton herself. Its a withering crossexamination. The black lives Matter Movement challenged her and him, bill clinton on his record on crime and on race. And Bernie Sanders and the occupiers shall wing of the party, the Economic Economic populist wing and anti banker way really looked at him and on this one i think rightly so. For the undoing the glass steel making regulations. But for many other things as well. So, this complex of issues and laws and decisions that constituted the clinton legacy that were thought of as positive for the democrats in the 1990s and Going Forward into the bush years suddenly they were horrible things. Suddenly there are things that were racist and corporatist things the Democratic Party should never ever have done. Its interesting. We have not seen in our lifetime a president ial reputation flip like that. I was struck often over the course of the past year and a half and i wrote a lot of columns, few anyway. Trying to remind people of the context of those times. Im not a guy who agreed with everything bill clinton did. I wasnt a big supporter in 1992, i became a bigger supporter over time as it became more clear to me just how insane he drove the right wing. I figured if he makes them that crazy there must be something about him that im missing. And i finally want to him. I used to joke with friends part of the few in the prow that became a clinton fan during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. At the beginning i was not a great fan, nevertheless, recognized that these things that he was doing the Democratic Party kind had to do some of these things. So so lets go back in time. I can see that some of you may have been around and may remember. So it is 1988 and the democrats have lost three president ial elections in a row and that had never happened to the Democratic Party i dont i dont think ever. It only happened to the Republican Party with roosevelt and truman, going back a few years so that was a real crisis to lose three in a row. If you loose to you think well, you can write it off to the guys charisma and personality. That that was reagan. We couldnt really reagan had some kinda special sauce and we couldnt really compete with him and the economy was doing well. But when you lose the third one, especially to wish a singer who is not a great politician with a candidate who seems good im a 17 points ahead coming out of the convention. You lose that that third one is time to take a look in the mirror. And do something a little different. And so who founded the Democratic Leadership Council in 1984, 85 had seen bill clinton give a speech, he had met them before but then he saw clinton give a speech in the mid 1980s and he said this guy who can rescue this party. He went to him and said that to him. He recounted this and i recount als recounting of it in the book. And he said i want you to become the president of the Democratic Leadership Council and you and i are going to travel around the country together and made a lot of people and youre going to give speeches and mom for president and youre gonna win and were both could be important people. They said some goods to me and thats what happened. He had a lot of natural talent of course. To return to the question of the positions Democratic Party did have a really sorry reputation with respect to issues like crime which was much more rampant them. This this is 25 years ago. You can put yourself back i was a reporter in new york city at the time in new york city was topping 2200 homicides per year. This back down around 400 which is what it was 50 years ago. 2200 homicides is a lot. And more than 20000 nationally. Inspect down to be in half that. And welfare was an issue then you all know the story. You dont need need me to tell you this. The democrats were seen as Middle America is not having credibility on this. There is historical reason for clinton to take the positions that he did. It is worth remembering whether you agree or disagree, it it is worth remembering that he did take those positions and he did when and he did probably save the Democratic Party. If the democrats had nominated another mondale or whatever they probably would have lost again and then where would they be its a very different Democratic Party today. You have a generation who was not around when clinton was president so they do not have any appreciation of the good things he did. But what he did, whether you like it or not what he did for the most part was pretty necessary at the time, for the party to become a Majority Party again. Now we get to the lewinsky question. I had fun writing this section of the book. Actually because its not a particularly fun episode to relive but i think i tell the story quite well if i may say so myself. Over the course of a couple of chapters i think its a 109 because this was something that, it was something that we had never confronted before in this country. I talk about this in the book too. We know that we live in an age of polarization. That started in the 19 nineties. At the level that we understand it now. Bill clinton was the first president who had to deal with this sort of thing. First of all the media change. We have for the First Time Ever 24 slash seven news on television. Cnn started while they started before but the concept of a 24 slash seven new cycle became a thing in the 1990s. So there is this new beasts that had to be fed constantly. Another new thing was an explicitly conservative media. Again for the first time in history he was the first president who really had to deal with this. The roots of this went back to the Reagan Administrations decision to terminate the fairness doctrine which had existed since radiohead existed which told people with radio licenses that you have to represent both sides equally. The Reagan Administration did away with that historical irony. At the time they did this and the regular ministration they complained because they wont put on conservative voices now because theyre just gonna put on liberals i will never hear a conservative voice. Things went in a different direction didnt they. Then. Then came limbaugh and then his imitators and then came the Weekly Standard and taking the New York Post back. All of that happened in the late 80s and 90s. So you had this 247 media and a conservative media apparatus that happened for the first time that came together and i think in many ways clinton did not know how to handle it and hillary did note how to handle it. She botched her response to the whitewater thing which from the start. And then the republicans at the same time, the Republican Party under gingrich and under other influences to became much more intensely partisan than the Republican Party had ever been. Sure you you remember who the House Republican leader before Newt Gingrich was. Bob michael, this guy from michigan. Central illinois, right. A moderate guy and a guy whos sort of wanted to get along and be bipartisan is replaced by Newt Gingrich. Another thing that that happened around the same time the Republican Party is the rise of americans for tax reform. And the pledge that they make republican signed to never raise an income tax. That was after George Hw Bush raised income taxes in 1990 and they made sure that no republican would support an income tax ever after. And to this day, depending on how you count, there couple of you that you could put in there, but basically to this day not a single Republican House member senator has voted for a single tax increase, would you say thats where . There were a couple of deals in the second obama camp that might be arguably a tax increase, but not really. Think how much that change politics. Up until that point when it came time to raise taxes and support