THE DEMOCRATS' PUBLIC FACE

Their Lives an Open Book, Clintons Enter a New Phase (ADAM NAGOURNEY and RAYMOND HERNANDEZ, June 5, 2003, NY Times)

With the tabloid headlines about her marriage, the Sunday prime-time interview with Barbara Walters and the promise of a cover story in Time magazine, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today rode the wave of an extravagant publicity campaign that befits the publication of a book for which she was paid $8 million.

But in many ways, the Clintons' friends said today, it is not only a memoir by a former first lady that is being rolled out.

It is also the Clintons themselves, embarking on the latest chapter in a public life that has made them an object of admiration, scorn and puzzlement since the former governor of Arkansas ran for president in 1992, and sold them as a "buy one get one free" team of public servants.

Mrs. Clinton is dealing with an issue, her husband's infidelity, which she has until now rarely addressed in public, and which her own advisers viewed as a hindrance to a public career that they would like to see end back in the White House. And by design or not, her book arrives at a time when her husband appears to be ending a self-imposed moratorium and taking more of a hand in national Democratic politics.

The Clintons spent much of the first 30 months of the Bush presidency keeping a low profile and trying to avoid the storms that engulfed Mr. Clinton's presidency, his friends said today. But that period is now coming to an end, as they try in different ways to assert their presence in American politics, and embark on promoting books for which they were paid advances totaling close to $20 million. Mr. Clinton's memoir is to be published in 2004.

Not incidentally, the personal nature of Mrs. Clinton's book suggests they are about to define a new period in a relationship that has long been a source of gossipy speculation and that even their closest friends describe as enigmatic.

To begin with, anyone who thinks that this book is giving them an intimate look at what really went on is a dupe. But there also seems to be some concern among conservatives that the Clintons may be rehabilitated. This doesn't seem like a worthwhile concern so long as the war on terror continues (and it will continue for some time). Republicans should be able to run against the fundamental unseriousness of the Clinton era for quite a few years still. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 6, 2003 11:56 AM