The Age of Clinton

August 24, 2015
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Troy (Moynihan’s Moment), a history professor at McGill University, delivers a detailed report on the turbulent Clinton White House years, complete with an account of the Clintons’ personal and political triumphs and tragedies. Troy notes that to many, Bill and Hillary Clinton represented the baby boomer generation, having come of age during J.F.K.’s Camelot era, as well as the blended values of “Reaganite conservatism and Great Society liberalism.” Against the backdrop of the progressive 1990s, Troy describes the Clintons’ efforts to navigate celebrity, scandal, GOP attacks, and impeachment threats while railing against “a right-wing conspiracy.” Though the Clintons failed to meet some of their domestic goals, the redeemed “son of the New South” accomplished much in international politics, created a budget surplus, and survived a charge of “impeachable offenses” in Congress. This meticulous, year-by-year account spans the silver-tongued Arkansas politician’s Washington reign, but Troy also provides a series of flashbacks to George H.W. Bush’s administration, touching upon the first Gulf War, the beating of Rodney King, and Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination. As ’90s nostalgia grows, Troy’s work reminds readers of the best and worst of the decade’s political culture. Agent: Don Fehr, Trident Media Group.

August 15, 2015
A contextual reassessment of the Bill Clinton presidency. Troy (History/McGill Univ.; Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight Against Zionism as Racism, 2012, etc.), who has written extensively about presidential politics, "seriously" reconsiders the era of the Clinton White House, apart from the media's obsession with Bill's and Hillary's "character flaws." Bill Clinton dominated the 1990s as Ronald Reagan dominated the 1980s, and in an extraordinarily complex decade that embraced the Internet and what Troy calls "virtual prosperity," the Clintons were the first baby boomers in the White House to meld their 1960s sensibilities with the modern age. Clinton rode into power on the self-righteous reaction to the daunting domestic challenges that President George Bush preferred to ignore in favor of dealing with the end of the Cold War-namely, racism, sexism, and homophobia. The 1992 election was "a true generational culture clash," writes the author, and the challenge that the Clintons took up successfully was presenting a program that combined "Wal-Mart populism and Ivy League progressivism." Recovering from major stumbles during the first year of his presidency and benefiting from a steep learning curve, Clinton managed to build a stable policy foundation on "common ground," such as a global economy and welfare reform, without expanding the reaches of government. Blessed with heavy-handed enemies who often self-destructed (Newt Gingrich), the Clintons effectively attacked their critics and recast themselves constantly-Bill as the "good father" and Hillary from vilified White House enforcer to the rehabilitated author of It Takes a Village (1996). With plenty of detail, Troy depicts the underlying tensions of this conflicted decade, from the Rodney King beating to the advent of the 24-hour Fox News Channel to the "manufactured miracles" of Silicon Valley. Both sympathetic and fair-handed, a solid examination of the "Adversarial Supercouple" before the slide toward scandal and impeachment.

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