'Clintonmania' set to rule
2004-06-21 21:52
New York - Bill Clinton fever gripped New York on Monday, ahead of the release of the former president's autobiography, whose scandal-fuelled content looks set to shoot it straight to the top of the bestseller lists.
The midnight launch of the 957-page My Life has taken on the trappings of a presidential campaign, with Clinton going back on the stump, criss-crossing the United States over the next month to promote the book.
While leaked details of the memoir in the press have paid lip-service to Clinton's writings on Osama bin Laden, North Korea and the Middle East, most attention has remained firmly focused on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The book covers Clinton's childhood, ascendancy to the White House and two-term presidency, but it is the personal side of Clinton, rather than the public policymaker, that has fuelled record pre-orders.
Clinton's publishers, Alfred Knopf, have cranked out a record-breaking 1.5 million copies of My Life, more than the 1.2 million first printing for Pope John Paul II's 1994 Crossing the Threshold of Hope.
Some bookstores will open at midnight to satisfy customers unable to wait until morning, and diehard Clinton fans are expected to queue through the night for a midday book signing by the author in Manhattan.
Following emotional tributes that followed the recent death of another former president, Ronald Reagan, "Clintonmania" looks set to rule for the next week at least, even drowning out the real campaign for November's presidential election.
Clinton sent to the couch
In a sign of many talk shows to come, part of an hour long interview with Clinton on CBS's 60 Minutes programme on Sunday was devoted to the Lewinsky affair and its fallout.
Asked whether he wished he had been more forthcoming to Americans about his affair, Clinton said: "I'd like to say yes, but I can't. I don't know, because the moment was so crazy. It was a zoo. It was unreal. It was ... like living in a madhouse."
In the book, Clinton declares his personal disgust with his behaviour toward Lewinsky and describes how his wife, Hillary Clinton, reacted to his belated confession to the affair as if she had been punched in the stomach, and then banished him to a White House couch.
On other issues, Clinton describes his failure to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as his "biggest disappointment," adding he was equally sorry that he "wasn't able enough to convince the Israelis and the Palestinians to make peace."
Clinton also criticises President George W Bush for invading Iraq without letting UN inspectors finish their search for Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction.
The majority of cultural critics have yet to pronounce judgement on the book's literary worth, although the New York Times on Sunday published a scathing review that dismissed the book as "sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull."
While Clinton can only be too aware that the Lewinsky topic will dominate his talk show appearances with the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Larry King, aides say he hopes readers will get beyond the scandal and into the meat of the public issues discussed in the book.