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Mr. and Mrs.President

See How They Ran

George Stephanopoulos, scion of a family of Greek clergymen, discovered that in Clinton's White House you cannot do good and do well. As in its best-selling competitor, Monica's Story, in All Too Human, Bill Clinton corrupts an ambitious idealist who is reduced to popping anti-depressants.

For five years, Stephanopoulos was Clinton's girl Friday. Joining a quixotic campaign in 1991, Stephanopoulos rode the Clinton roller- coaster, careening from the Gennifer Flowers and draft-dodging scandals into a coveted cubbyhole off the Oval Office, leaving after the 1996 re-election. Surprisingly, Stephanopoulos and his fellow insurgents only found their footing in Washington by "going native," by hiring insiders like Reaganite communications guru David Gergen.

As Clinton's "flak-catcher, defender, and message disciplinarian," this 30-something aide had such access - and such arrogance - he calls the Clinton administration "our presidency." A Rhodes scholar blessed with a boyish mop of hair, this wonky heartthrob became a celebrity. "Boy George" vividly describes his journey, humbled, for a change, by the Greek community's pride in its golden boy.

Stephanopoulos witnessed Bill and Hillary Clinton's loving and painful relationship: cooing lovers; partners whose night-tables groaned with matched stacks of reading; competitors who clash as he disappoints her, she berates him. Stephanopoulos believes Hillary's take-no-prisoner's attitude doomed health-care reform and escalated Whitewater from an embarrassment into a catastrophe.

Unfortunately, admission to the inner sanctum was costly. Stephanopoulos was a slave to another man's whims. A central member of Clinton's dysfunctional official family, Stephanopoulos spent five years ricocheting from crisis to crisis, absorbing the boss's many tantrums, soothing the first lady, fending off rivals, reporters and Republicans. In return, he endured that awful rite of initiation in today's Washington, hiring a criminal attorney to avoid indictment. He also suffered from insomnia, depression, hives and a "screeching" sound in his head that only disappeared with the anti-depressant Zoloft.

Along the way, Stephanopoulos lost his idealism and his moral centre. Repeatedly, the liberal Stephanopoulos justified Clinton's unprincipled pragmatism. It was a Faustian bargain: "In return for the privilege of influencing issues you care about, in return for the rush of power and reflected glory, you defend the boss - fiercely, unapologetically, giving no ground." Once, when Stephanopoulos passed the young daughter of a critic outside a television studio, he barked: "Your father is a really bad man."

Clinton so dominates this narrative it is hard to discern what lessons apply generally and what is unique to Clinton. Stephanopolous struggles with "the Clinton paradox: How could a president so intelligent, so compassionate, so public-spirited and so conscious of his place in history act in such a stupid, selfish and self-destructive manner?"

Stephanopoulos believes that optimism explains Clinton's success. Clinton's confidence stems from his finest attributes: his ebullience, his humaneness, his faith in himself and his country, his desire to help the unfortunate. But it also results from his selfishness, his ruthlessness, his shamelessness.

Clinton comes across as a force of nature, a political thoroughbred with encyclopedic knowledge, inhuman stamina and a steely will to win. Possessing gargantuan appetites, Clinton often indulges his emotions and intuits the needs of others, especially in crowds. Thus, President I-Feel-Your-Pain can in all sincerity promise goodies to the poor and apologize for tax hikes to the rich. Ronald Reagan's aides lived in fear of a mangled fact; Clinton's aides fear some binding concession made while seducing the audience of the moment.

Clinton's aides struggled to save the great seducer from himself. With the hair-splitting skill of Talmudists, with the brutality of Huns, Clinton's Samurai warriors mastered a brilliant jujitsu whereby no attack goes unanswered, accusations get turned on the enemy, and the viciousness of the crossfire numbs the American people. Truth to Clintonites was malleable, and severing the weakest link in a story invalidated it all. When Clinton read Gennifer Flowers's account of their affair, "Every time he spotted a detail he knew was wrong, he seized on it, even squeaking out a laugh when he found charges he knew he could disprove."

In Washington, graybeards tut-tut about Stephanopolous's betrayal - the president supposedly banned mention of the Judas's name. But such disloyalty is understandable. Clinton is the Typhoid Mary of progressive politics, besmirching all who befriend him - and saddling them with huge legal bills, or worse.

This book tackles the real mystery: how has this abusive, amoral politician engendered such widespread loyalty? Stephanopoulos quotes the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: "Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure."

Self-interest reinforced the faith. After 12 years of Reagan and Bush, of Dukakis and Mondale, Clinton seduced Democrats, first with the scent of victory, then the aphrodisiac of power. Convinced that Clinton's heart was in the right place, his minions were willing to do whatever was necessary to keep him - and themselves - in power.

Like his master, Stephanopoulos thinks that if he apologizes enough times, he can convince everyone including himself that he is a good person. But Stephanopoulos does not assess the fallout from the Clintonites' too-clever-by-half assault on truth: the us-vs.- them polarization, the they're-all-a-buncha-crooks cynicism, the win- at-all-costs moral chaos.

Despite it all, Stephanopoulos, like Monica Lewinsky, remains in love with Clinton. Stephanopoulos believes Clinton grew as president, saving affirmative action, reordering budget priorities and sending troops into Bosnia. Most important to partisans like Stephanopoulos, Clinton gave the good guys eight years to govern, "making the day-to-day decisions that add up to meaningful change."

For all its attacks on Clinton, this book mimics the party line that he is a good president who could have been great, whose journey was "rocky but fundamentally righteous." Stephanopoulos calls Clinton an Eisenhower, competently maintaining peace and prosperity.

Clinton knows: better Eisenhower than Nixon. He has launched his final campaign - for historical vindication. He may yet succeed. As this fascinating, depressing, compelling and illuminating memoir makes clear, the smart money never bets against the comeback kid.

- Gil Troy is the chairman of the department of history at McGill University. He is the author of Affairs of State: the Rise and Rejection of the Presidential Couple Since World War II.