Unlike what tradition dictates for former presidents of the United States—retiring to a private life away from the public sphere—, Bill Clinton He chose a different path. Instead of finding peace in bucolic activities like George W. Bushwho clears brush on his Texas ranch, Clinton decided to stay in the global arena.
“I didn’t think my work here on Earth was done yet,” he writes in Citizen: My Life After the White Housea volume in which he narrates his life – and agenda – full of activities after leaving the presidency in 2001. However, he avoids exploring more intimate or controversial aspects of his career, and writes a charismatic but controlled narrative.
The president has disappeared
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The book is impregnated with the Clinton’s defining characteristics: loquacity, charisma and a inexhaustible touch of spectacle. Throughout its pages, the former president recounts how he launched himself into action in disaster zones like a lawyer looking for clients.
Thus, he recounts his work as a collaborator in Gujarat after an earthquake, in Asia behind him tsunami of 2004 or in Puerto Rico after a hurricanealways accompanied by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Sean Penn o George Clooney. “I volunteered to help,” he says on the pages.
In a hospital of the IndiaClinton remembers “visiting patients and families who wanted to greet him” while in Rwanda, with his daughter Chelseaperformed a demonstration on how to filter cloudy water, benefiting, he claims, “millions of poor people.”
However, the constant presence of public figures and high-profile events introduces a theatrical nuance that turns tragedies into scenarios where Clinton plays the role of committed hero. A hurricane, he confesses, even provided him with “the most fun” thanks to a performance of Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Bill Clinton also mentions his collaboration with James Patterson in of the suspended soap operas published in 2018 and 2021, where they imagine American presidents as action heroes in scenarios full of risk and adventure.
Although Clinton does not skimp on words or anecdotes, the reader will find a notable gap: his narrative rarely delves into introspection or the more personal aspects of your life. His autobiographical approach is limited to turning experiences into “teachable moments” that, while offering practical reflections, lack the emotional depth that might be expected from a figure of his stature.
For example, his brief mention of the scandal Monica Lewinsky It avoids any intimate apology and is diluted in public explanations that do not transcend the anecdotal.
Instead, he refers to a public statement he made during a meeting with religious leaders in the White Housewhere he expressed “general regrets.” In the book, Clinton also shows his anger at an interview where he was accused of not apologizing directly to Lewinsky. About that interview, the former US president says: “It was not my best moment.”
This general tone of cordiality without confidentiality is reminiscent of a calculated strategy. In diplomatic missionslike his effort to release two journalists held in North KoreaClinton recounts having rehearsed not smiling in the official photograph to convey seriousness. These types of decisions reveal a man always aware of the image he projects, even in his memories.
In Citizen, The former American president turns his anecdotes into what he calls “teachable moments”using episodes from his life as metaphors for broader reflections.
He remembers, for example, an open-air bath in his childhood in Arkansas“attractive to snakes in summer,” which introduces a homily about “productive grassroots collaborations with companies.”
The snakes, real in his memory, slither through grass that is merely metaphorical here. In contrast, the only apolitical and genuinely funny moment involves his three-year-old daughter Chelsea, who, upon visiting the house of George H. W. Bush in Maine, he mischievously asks his host, “Where is the bathroom?”
In the background of CitizenClinton draws a portrait of his global ambitions through an alphabet of organizations with their name: the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI)the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI)among others.
These foundations, initially funded by speaking fees, reflect both his passion for public service and his need to stay busy. “I had to start making money,” he admits sincerely, alluding to the legal debts he was carrying after the attempts to remove him.
In this sense, Clinton makes reference in the pages of the book and reflects on the climate change and other global challenges, although its tone tends towards the bureaucratic. Warns that the global warming could lead to “a real-life sequel to the post-apocalyptic films of Road Warrior”, a scenario that seems to captivate him more than politics itself, which he describes with technocratic and emotionless language, considering it “deadly boring.”
Clinton closes her book with a question that resonates in the interstellar void: “What does all this mean in the grand scheme of things?” A fleeting moment of cosmic doubt that, however, barely scratches the surface of his inner life.
Citizen: My Life After the White House He leaves the reader with the impression of a man who, despite his energy and achievements, continues to search for his place in the world. But he does so without shedding his political armor, making his story an entertaining, if impersonal, work.
Is Clinton happy? As he claims, it is. Although, for such a public man, the true answer could be found in the silences he leaves in his pages.
