On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency

Clinton's far-reaching domestic proposals and considerable achievements are recounted, as well as the distracting and corrosive personal struggles, especially Whitewater. Drew portrays his legislative gambles - from health care to NAFTA - and his costly inattention to foreign policy - the confused policymaking on Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti. She reveals the struggles within the President's foreign policy team. She traces how controversies over such a wide range of issues and events - gays in the military, the mishandling of Zoe Baird's and Lani Guinier's nominations, the $200 haircut, the travel office, and the death of Vincent Foster - have undermined confidence in Clinton's Presidency and fanned the flames of "the character issue." She shows sides of Clinton never seen before and explores the critical and little-understood role of Hillary Rodham Clinton - both as a power and as a personality - and measures the truly unprecedented influence of Vice President Al Gore.