First it was a week of Reagan and now it's non-stop Clinton coverage. I guess it's good to be an ex-President. Oh, wait, Reagan died tho, right? That's not so good. Anyways, unless you've been living under a rock you know that former President Bill Clinton's book, My Life, is going to be released this week. Clinton has giving a bunch of interviews which will start appearing tonight on 60 Minutes. He'll be on Oprah, Larry King Live, the Today Show and Good Morning America this week too. Clips from some of his already taped interviews and from his book have started to appear in the press.

Some of the highlights (This post is long and a work in progress - mmmPoo - 6/20/2004 @ 2:24PM):

POTUS on the Couch?

Bill Clinton says in his new autobiography that his wife looked as if he had punched her in the gut when he finally confessed to his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and he spent at least two months sleeping on the couch after that. (CNN)

You are telling me the President of the United States of America, the leader of the free world, the man the people elected to live in the White House was forced to sleep on the couch for two months? The guy messed up bad, but send Hillary to the couch to at least another room in the large White House. He's the one that got them into that cool residency. Ah well.

New York Times Book Review 1 

The book is sprawling, undisciplined and idiosyncratic in its choice of emphasis. It devotes nearly 100 pages to his childhood but treats large spans of his presidency as a travelogue of campaign cities and foreign capitals. Mr. Clinton wrote his book after the Sept. 11 attacks, and he devotes a good deal of space to his administration's efforts to deal with terrorism, and its growing concern about Osama bin Laden.

Yikes! Sounds like they aren't much of a fan. The review is actually pretty detailed tho and looks like a good summary of the major sections of the book. If you read the whole review, it doesn't sound like they totally hated it, they just feel he could have focused more time on certain topics. His presidency doesn't even get discussed until like 400 pages into the 900 page book.

New York Times Book Review 2

Here's a second review that appeared in the New York Times. It's far more brutal:

The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.

In many ways, the book is a mirror of Mr. Clinton's presidency: lack of discipline leading to squandered opportunities; high expectations, undermined by self-indulgence and scattered concentration. This memoir underscores many strengths of Mr. Clinton's eight years in the White House and his understanding that he was governing during a transitional and highly polarized period. But the very lack of focus and order that mars these pages also prevented him from summoning his energies in a sustained manner to bring his insights about the growing terror threat and an Israeli-Palestinian settlement to fruition.

...But while Dan Rather, who interviewed Mr. Clinton for "60 Minutes," has already compared the book to the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, arguably the most richly satisfying autobiography by an American president, "My Life" has little of that classic's unsparing candor or historical perspective. Instead, it devolves into a hodgepodge of jottings: part policy primer, part 12-step confessional, part stump speech and part presidential archive, all, it seems, hurriedly written and even more hurriedly edited.

Washington Post: Clinton memoir ushers in a different wave of nostalgia

While president and in the years since, Clinton has offered an upbeat vision of a diverse and interconnected planet. As Clinton sketches it, the world is filled with promise and peril, but far more of the former if nations work together to create an enlightened "international community." In Europe and elsewhere, polls show Clinton remains a highly popular figure.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush's vision is darker -- and his supporters say more realistic. He has emphasized a hate-filled world in which Islamic extremists regard the values and good intentions of the international community with contempt. Bush says he welcomes partners in the fight against terrorism, but in words and actions has made clear that forceful action is a higher priority than the good will of allies.

...Clinton himself has drawn a similar contrast. In a recent speech at the University of Kansas, he said the country needs "a strategy to make a world with more partners and fewer terrorists."

"If you believe the world is interdependent and you cannot kill, occupy or imprison all your actual or potential adversaries, sooner or later you have to make a deal," he said.

The article also has some good comparsions between Reagan and Clinton and talks about how Clinton tried to model himself after Reagan. Interesting stuff.

Time Magazine has an interview with Clinton this week too. Sadly their site is only open for subscribers, but Drudge carried some highlights..