The eight years of Clinton’s presidency managed to be tumultuous yet somehow negligible. Did the Republicans really impeach him? Did he actually manage to balance not one but three budgets? Could he have botched health care that badly? Looked at two presidencies, two wars, and nearly 20 years later, it all seems a little unreal. There was a lot of sound, a lot of fury (Bill and Hillary Clinton did get compared to the Macbeths a fair amount back then). It signified something - but what?
“Clinton,’’ a documentary that efficiently packs a lot into its four-hour length, helps bring back the reality without dwelling overmuch on significance. Written and directed by Barak Goodman, it airs in two parts, tonight and tomorrow night on PBS (Channel 2). Campbell Scott narrates.
Analysis and interpretation are left to the more than 40 talking heads. They range from journalists such as Joe Klein and David Maraniss, to such Clinton associates as Dee Dee Myers and Robert Reich, to such Clinton detractors (too weak a word) as Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr. A far less prominent Clinton detractor, US Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, says one thing that probably everyone in the documentary can agree on: “In Bill Clinton’s life, nothing stays quiet for long.’’
Tonight’s broadcast, “The Comeback Kid,’’ offers a quick overview of Clinton’s Arkansas years (getting to see a television ad from the 28-year-old candidate’s unsuccessful 1974 run for Congress is a nice bonus), an excellent and exciting account of his 1992 presidential campaign, and a slightly boggy rundown of his first two years in the White House. One could argue that the bogginess is justified, since that’s how Clinton experienced his introduction to the presidency. Part one ends with the Republican landslide in the 1994 midterm elections.
