[Bill Clinton] is even more tight-lipped about a White House scandal that is impossible for him to blame on [Ken Starr] or the "vast right- wing conspiracy." Even though a Senate investigation of shadowy Asian hustlers gaining access to Clinton at White House coffees dominated the headlines in 1997, Clinton devotes only a few stray paragraphs to these embarrassing lapses. Nowhere does Clinton acknowledge the truth expressed by Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman: "The fundraising scandal of 1996 was a very real tragedy, with very real consequences for our democracy."

The heart of the Clinton saga is his six years of national political ascendancy, from the 1992 campaign to that fateful morning in January 1998 when The Washington Post revealed the president's entanglement with his former intern. Even chronicling this pre- Monica era over 400 pages, Clinton can be exasperating. He insists that he had not planned to run for president in 1992, saying that he had begun his fifth term as Arkansas governor in 1991 "excited by the coming legislative session." It strains credulity to believe that Clinton would have been content to spend another four years in Little Rock when the national stage beckoned so beguilingly.