http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7813The Monica Pages
The best parts of Bill's new book are right here.
By Tony Hendra
Web Exclusive: 06.08.04
Bill Clinton’s $10 million autobiography, My Life, comes out this month. While the book will cover the accomplishments of the best president we’ve had since the last Bush disaster dragged us into recession and war, 99 percent of its readers will buy it for the three pages devoted to Monica Lewinsky. To save you plowing through acres of nostalgic wonkery (and $21), here they are:
"Come in Ms Lewinsky," I said. It was a bright morning in the fall of 1995. I had no idea that this would be a moment that would change my life, my presidency, my whole way of thinking about women and what they can contribute to public life.
She was a foursquare young person with what we used to call, in my native Arkansas, ‘big hair.’ If there were a ‘type’ of woman to whom I was attracted other than my beloved wife and life partner Hillary Rodham Clinton, which there isn’t, I would be compelled to say she was not by any stretch of the imagination, however you might define that term, my type.
The first thing I noticed about her was an overstuffed briefcase, from which back copies of Foreign Policy were spilling. The second was the large cigar that she produced from nowhere and lit without asking me if I minded. ‘This is a no-nonsense, take-charge character,’ I thought to myself -- with the added advantage, as I would soon discover, of having a terrific head on her shoulders.
‘Mr. President,’ she began forcefully, puffing on her cigar. ‘I’ve been an intern here since June and I’ve been trying to get Leon
to arrange a meeting with you for all that time. You need me, Mr President, you need me desperately!’
‘Well now, Ms. Lewinsky,’ I said, taken aback by her directness. ‘It’s not usual for an intern to get a one-on-one meeting with the President of the United States … .’
‘Let’s cut the crap, sir,’ she said. ‘Our country and you personally face a crisis of monumental proportions. Thanks to that self-aggrandizing blowhard Gingrich and his gang of whining, penny-pinching 19th-century throwbacks, we’re completely distracted by petty bourgeois fiscal concerns when we ought to be focused on the prime post-Cold War threat to our security and survival.’
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