All Too Human: A Political Education

All Too Human is a new-generation political memoir, written from the refreshing perspective of one who got his hands on the levers of awesome power at an early age. At thirty, the author was at Bill Clinton's side during the presidential campaign of 1992, & for the next five years he was rarely more than a step away from the president & his other advisers at every important moment of the first term. What Liar's Poker did to Wall Street, this book will do to politics. It is an irreverent & intimate portrait of how the nation's weighty business is conducted by people whose egos & idiosyncrasies are no sturdier than anyone else's. Including sharp portraits of the Clintons, Al Gore, Dick Morris, Colin Powell, & scores of others, as well as candid & revelatory accounts of the famous debacles & triumphs of an administration that constantly went over the top, All Too Human is, like its author, a brilliant combination of pragmatic insight & idealism. It is destined to be the most important & enduring book to come out of the Clinton administration.

National fame came early to Stephanopoulos, who by age 31 was President Clintons first director of communications until he was promoted to the vaguely defined, vulnerable position of senior advisor. He views Clinton as the best politician he has ever known, who could have accomplished much more if he were a better person. First Lady Hillary Clinton is portrayed as fiercely loyal and at times inflexible and ambitious. Ultimately, Stephanopolous fell out of favor for being a traditional liberal in an administration that increasingly believed that the era of big government was dead and also because he was a reputed news leaker, a charge he denies. The strengths of the book are also its weaknesses. An engaging, self-deprecating style, similar to that of Robert Reich, Clintons first secretary of labor (Locked in the Cabinet, LJ 4/1/97), is marred by an overabundance of italicized comments representing rejoinders that could have been used with devastating effect in confrontations but werent. A forthright honesty about his own faults dissolves into self-pity during an extended section on his fights with his major political foe, Dick Morris, the pollster who was brought on board to improve Clintons image but departed when his telephone antics with a prostitute were discovered. Stephanopoulos resigned at the end of the first term and recently condemned the Lewinsky affair as Clintons abandonment of presidential policies and more than a few trusted advisors in order to save himself. Overall, a fascinating if controversial insiders account of life inside the Clinton pressure cooker administration during its early years. A required purchase for public libraries.Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.