These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

BILL CLINTON, FORTY-SIX when he entered the White House and gone already gray, stood six foot two. He had a grin like a 1930s comic-strip scamp, the cadence of a southern Baptist preacher, and the husky voice of a blues singer. He’d grown up poor in Hope, Arkansas—the boy from Hope—and he climbed his way to the White House by dint of charm and hard work and good luck. During the Vietnam War, he’d dodged the draft. After a Rhodes Scholarship and an education at Yale Law School, he’d begun a career in politics, with his young wife at his side. Like many a president before and since, he liked to be liked and he yearned to be admired, although, unlike most presidents, Clinton wore his neediness on his face; he had, all his life, the face of a boy. He was only thirty-two in 1978 when he was elected governor of Arkansas. He appeared to serve as a bridge between the Old Democrats and the New Democrats. A white southerner from a humble background, he appealed to the party’s old base. An Ivy League–educated progressive with a strong record on civil rights, he appealed to the party’s new base. And yet he was, all along, a rascal. In 1992, Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination had nearly been felled by his reputation as a philanderer. After allegations of one extramarital affair hit the tabloids, he and his wife appeared on 60 Minutes, sitting together stiffly, and he admitted to “causing pain in my marriage.” Citing his right to privacy, he refused to directly answer any ...