Running For History

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Friends say, even absent scandal, his eighth year was never going to be a casual victory stroll. The guy loves being President, they say. "He was always going to do lots of Democratic fund raisers and push an aggressive legislative agenda, and he's always said that after Hillary had supported his career all these years, it was going to be her turn," says a former staff member. "Would he have done so many money events without Monica? Is he somehow working extra hard for Hillary? Who knows?"

Clinton will certainly not be leaving the job of spinning history to others. He will tell his side of the story in a memoir. (It could fetch $8 million to $10 million, publishing experts say, if he gets into the personal side of the Monica crisis and its effect on Hillary and Chelsea.) He will also have legal arenas to address--or redress--his legacy: disbarment proceedings in the Arkansas courts stemming from his alleged perjury in the Paula Jones deposition, and a possible federal indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the Lewinsky investigation. Clinton will do some speeches, at perhaps $100,000 a pop in the U.S. and for more overseas. He will need the funds to help pay his legal bills, though those close to him say making money will remain a low priority.

The President's friend Skip Rutherford is currently directing the physical effort to embody Clinton's legacy: the $150 million presidential library, a combination archive, museum, policy center and graduate school, to be built on 28 acres along the banks of the Arkansas River. The Clinton Center will house the largest collection of presidential materials ever because its subject is not only the most investigated President in history but also the most photographed, most recorded and most documented. The building is being designed by one of America's leading architects, James Polshek, who did the new, award-winning Hayden Planetarium in New York City. The exhibits that will tell the story of Clinton's life and times are being curated by Ralph Appelbaum, who worked on the planetarium as well as the distinguished U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Clinton is, not surprisingly, "one of the most attentive clients we've ever had," Polshek says. The President has decreed that the design be "elegant but not pompous." And yes, there will be some architectural allusion to that bridge to the 21st century.

The White House has already got a jump on the historians. By next month, each Cabinet department and major agency must produce a 1,000-page history, so that the incumbents can put their institutional stamp on what went on during the Clinton years. Nothing like it has been ordered up since L.B.J. prepared to leave office and impress his Great Society upon posterity. The museum's themes will, predictably enough, revolve around the economy, globalization, the information age and foreign affairs. What about Monica and impeachment? Rutherford replies only by reading from a letter of advice that Clinton got from David Eisenhower, Ike's grandson: "I would not duck impeachment. I would include it under the heading of politics."

"I think about today and tomorrow," Clinton told Esquire magazine, "and I expect I will until my last day on earth." He added, "To the people and the commentators ... that write about me, I might be just as good as dead the day I leave office. But that's not the way I look at my life." And so, following Jimmy Carter's strategy of countering bad memories with good works, Clinton will open a second front in his war for posterity. All Presidents, says historian Brinkley, "try to improve their reputation after they leave office. Andrew Johnson was elected Senator after he was impeached, and Herbert Hoover traveled the world as a humanitarian and wrote more than two dozen books." The Clinton Center, which will offer a master's degree in public service through the University of Arkansas, will wrestle not only with international issues but also with racial reconciliation, the information revolution and economic development. Clinton has vowed not to get in the way of his successors, as Teddy Roosevelt and, to a degree, Carter did. Still, his enormous popularity with foreign leaders and his formidable fund-raising skills almost guarantee that he will be called upon by either his country or his party. Brinkley predicts, "We're going to be dealing with Bill Clinton for a long time to come." Says Rutherford: "He'll be the youngest ex-President since Teddy Roosevelt. He figures at age 54, there's a lot more history to be made."