The survivor : Bill Clinton in the White House

Summary: Former Washington Post White House correspondent John Harris frames the historical debate about President William Jefferson Clinton by revealing the inner workings of the Clinton White House and providing an objective analysis of Clinton's leadership and its consequences. Harris shows Clinton entering the Oval Office in 1993 primed to make history. But with the Cold War recently concluded and the country coming off a nearly uninterrupted generation of Republican presidents, the new president's entry into this maelstrom of events was tumultuous. His troubles were exacerbated by the habits, personal contacts, and the management style, he had developed in his years as governor of Arkansas. Clinton's enthusiasm and temper were legendary, and he and Hillary Rodham Clinton -- whose ambitions and ordeals also fill these pages -- arrived filled with mistrust about many of the characters who greeted them in the "permanent Washington" that often holds the reins in the nation's capital. Showing surprising doggedness and a deep-set desire to govern from the middle, Clinton repeatedly rose to the challenges, eventually winning over (or running over) political adversaries on both sides of the aisle, sometimes facing as much skepticism from fellow Democrats as from his Republican foes. But, as shown in political debacles such as the attempted overhaul of health care and the numerous personal controversies that time and again threatened to consume his presidency, Bill Clinton could never overcome his tendency to favor conciliation over clarity, or his own destructive appetites.