Chapter One

I suppose it had to come to this, I thought to myself as I sat in the darkness of the NBC studio nook in New York, waiting for the familiar image of Bill Clinton to appear on the monitor. In a few minutes, Clinton would deliver a televised address to the nation concerning his extramarital sex life, a subject that no president before him had been compelled to discuss in public. It was obvious that he dreaded giving this speech, but circumstances had forced him into it; he thought his career was on the line. As his biographer, I would be asked to try to explain him, both what his words meant and why he had reached such an unfortunate moment. I had spent six years studying Clinton, but emotionally I had now moved beyond him, onto the subject of my next biography, Vince Lombardi, the old Green Bay Packers coach, a resolute symbol of the p ... read full excerpt from The Clinton Enigma: A Four-And-A-Half Minute Speech Reveals This President's Entire Life ebook