The Clinton Wars
Chapter One
The Challenge to the Old Order
I
Bill Clinton had been president for only a few weeks, less than half
of the fabled First Hundred Days by which all presidents have been
early judged since Franklin D. Roosevelt's first burst of the New
Deal. "Action, action, and more action," FDR had demanded. Now it
was March 1993, sixty years later, and President Clinton was coming
to Hyde Park.
I arrived early because I wanted to wander around Roosevelt's
presidential library to soak up the atmosphere before the clamorous
entourage wheeled in. Usually, the press corps traveling with the
president misses any sense of place. The media are everywhere and
nowhere at once. Acrobats in the circus get to see more of where
they are while the tent is pitched. The press corps lives with the
motorcade. My White House pass, showing that I represented The New
Yorker magazine, got me quickly past the checkpoints of the local
police and the sentries of the Secret Service. Their cordon for the
new president made this plot of land something of a san ... read full excerpt from: The Clinton Wars ebook
