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CNN Talkback Live

Is There Any Such Thing as Too Much Bill Clinton?

Aired August 06, 2001 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We love Clinton here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Bubba looked good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DARYN KAGAN, GUEST HOST: Some people can't get enough of former President Bill Clinton. And now Clinton is negotiating with publishers eager to sell his memoirs. "The New York Times" estimates that the deal is worth more than $8 million.

But is there enough interests in what the former president has to say to make the investment pay off?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: The president held my mommy's hand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, yes, shook this hand here -- but only three fingers.

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KAGAN: What do you think President Clinton will include in his memoirs? What do you want him to write about?

Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE. I'm Daryn Kagan, Bobbie Battista feeling just a little bit under the weather today, so I stayed late after school to fill in.

We are talking about Bill Clinton. There have been dozens of books written about the former president. His mother wrote a book, so did his wife. Now it is Bill's turn.

Less than an hour ago we learned that the deal is done, but not all publishers are convinced that Clinton's view is worth the investment. So today, among other things, I thought we could come up with some ideas -- some chapter ideas, perhaps, to help make his memoirs a best-seller.

To help us do that, joining us is Lanny Davis, former White House special counsel under President Clinton. He is the author of "Truth to Tell: Tell it Early, Tell it Early, Tell it All, Tell it to Yourself, Notes From my White House Education." John Fund, member of the editorial board at "The Wall Street Journal. " He is the co- author of "Cleaning House: America's Campaign for term Limits." And Nora Rawlinson, editor in chief at "Publisher's Weekly."

Welcome to all of you. Thank you for joining us.

LANNY DAVIS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE SPECIAL COUNSEL: Thank you.

NORA RAWLINSON, "PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY": Thank you.

KAGAN: Nora, you have the news nugget, so let's start with you. We know who is going to get the rights to this deal, but we don't necessarily know for how much.

RAWLINSON: No, they're not releasing the details of that. But Knopf is the winner of the auction, and Sonny Mehta just announced it within the last hour. Bob Bernstein is going to be his editor. And we know that they have worldwide rights, which means that the publisher will be able to sell those rights in other countries. They have rights to nearly everything, the audio, the electronic rights, so that helps with whatever the up-front advance cost was.

KAGAN: So that means probably a bigger number than, perhaps, if they were only doing the North American rights, let's say?

RAWLINSON: I think probably the number has much more to do with the interest of the book, and then the details of it are sort of how you justify it.

KAGAN: Give and us an inside look at the publishing world, how you think this deal probably worked out. Do you think up-front they say, OK look, Bill, you're going to be talking about this, this, and this. We want to know about these things in your personal life, we just don't want to hear your views on Middle East peace?

RAWLINSON: I think they're going to be a lot gentler with him than that. I think the real issue is getting a very well-known, fascinating ex-president's memoirs. Consider the 10 years ago Ronald Reagan's memoirs came out, and that deal was a $6 million deal.

So these kinds of deals are pretty big deals, and I don't think they can really press him that hard to say, we want you to tell us exactly what happened with Monica or any of that kind of thing.

KAGAN: Also in the publishing world, give us an inside view of this publishing house that won. Are you surprised that this is who's going to be doing the deal? And what do you know about this editor?

RAWLINSON: No, I'm not surprised. Bob Bernstein is very well- respected. Has edited many well-respected books -- certainly will be a guy that Clinton will respect, and vice-versa.

Knopf, of course, is a very well-respected publishing house. Part of the whole large Random House umbrella organization, which is the largest trade publisher in the United States. This is a publishing house that obviously has the money to spend on a big deal like this, and also has the experience it takes to deal with a big- name person and market the book the way it needs to be marketed.

Lanny, let's bring you in here. You were inside the White House, you know a lot of thing that probably many of us never will. But of what you know and what you don't know, what would you like to read from Bill Clinton?

DAVIS: This is, according to public opinion polls, one of the most popular presidencies in American history, certainty the highest poll ratings for a second-term president than was ever recorded. It also is, in my judgment, on job performance, one of the most successful presidencies.

I'd like to know the inside story -- I wasn't at the White House at the time -- how president Clinton stood up to a lot of people in his own White House and his party to insist on deficit reduction at the expense and the risk of many Democrats in the House of Representatives, which...

KAGAN: Really!

DAVIS: ... led to this nation's recovery.

KAGAN: Lanny, of everything that you want to know about -- deficit reduction?

DAVIS: Well, that's a story that is the beginning chapter of the Clinton presidency that led to surpluses, that led to the best economy we've ever experienced. And that story, where Bill Clinton fought against the base of his own party, and fought successfully, I think I'm looking forward to his telling, among many, many other stories about how successful his presidency ended up in terms of the public's opinion of his job performance.

KAGAN: John Fund, let's bring you in here. Do you think most people who buy this book will be looking for the chapter on deficit reduction?

JOHN FUND, "WALL STREET JOURNAL": Well, I think that would make a great Brookings Institution seminar. I'm not sure whether it sells books or not.

You know, these publishing political marriages don't seem to work out. I can't remember the last major political book that actually made back its advance. I'm not even sure if Colin Powell made back his advance. Certainly Ronald Reagan didn't. Certainly Richard Nixon didn't; certainly Jimmy Carter didn't.

Almost all of these books seem to fall flat, and I think they really are done for prestige purposes rather than real monetary advantage. And I think the winner here is going to be Bill Clinton, because he doesn't have to give anything up. And we're certainly not going to get anything close to the truth about what happened during his administration. We know that much.

KAGAN: Nora, is that right? Is this a loser, money- wise,usually, for a publishing house?

RAWLINSON: Well, I don't know where he gets his information but, no, they're not losers. By all accounts, every president's memoir has become a best-seller.

FUND: Ronald Reagan lost a lot of money, you know that Nora.

RAWLINSON: No, I don't know that.

FUND: I have these statistics from the publishers themselves, so they all lose money. Colin Powell might have made money.

KAGAN: Well, we still don't know how much we're talking here. But Nora, give us a ballpark figure. What do you think Bill Clinton is going to be getting for this book?

RAWLINSON: Well, it's difficult to speculate. Hillary Clinton got $8 for her book, so one would expect that there would be more for this book, maybe a million more, may be $9 million.

KAGAN: And how does it work? How did they come up with that price tag?

RAWLINSON: Well, they have to take into account how many copies they can sell. What -- again, what the rights situation is. The different forms in which they can sell the book -- hard cover. They've already announced that a year after it will go under paperback under Vintage, that they have the rights to sell it in any language in other countries, so to sell to another publisher to translate. They have the audio rights. Audio rights can be very lucrative as well...

KAGAN: But $9 million would be all-time? I mean, $9 million would definitely a record, right?

RAWLINSON: Nine million is a record for a one-time book, but there are other authors who are making more. Nine million is just the advance. If it earns back that $9 million, then President Clinton could get royalties as well.

There are other writers, generally in the fiction area, who are making more per book.

KAGAN: Lanny, what do you think? Do you think Bill Clinton deserves more for his book than Hillary Clinton is getting for hers?

DAVIS: Now, you're talking it a very biased observer, because...

KAGAN: I know that.

DAVIS: ... Hillary was my friend at Yale Law School, and I would hope that Hillary would get a higher amount no matter what she does.

But President Clinton has a story to tell and, with all due respect, the current best-seller on "The New York Time's" best-seller list is not a titillating story about private relations -- by David McCullough, and it's a pretty dry history of John Adams. I think the American people are going to look forward to the inside story of how Bill Clinton accomplished so much in his eight years. What he did to get the Northern Ireland situation, what happened at Camp David, how he fought through, again, the base of his own party on welfare reform, which, I think, took our party into the middle of the road.

Of course, there should be some chapter about the Ken Starr years, the abuse of prosecutorial power. What it was like to be in the White House where Congress was spending $20 million dollars on investigations that never went anywhere. I'm sure President Clinton is going to have something to say about the scandal machine, and he may even have some own personal comments of regrets about what happened in the Lewinsky episode -- I don't know.

But the thrust of this is about a successful presidency that, nobody can deny, left with public approval in the high 60s, an unprecedented number.

KAGAN: John, what do you think about the timing of this? The president did leave with high numbers, and yet he had a very bumpy first six months to start his former presidency. Is this a little bit late to be getting into -- negotiating book deal rights?

FUND: Oh, not at all, because I'm sure that if he'd tried to negotiate the deal five months ago they would have wanted to know all about the pardons. He's let that slip.

Bill Clinton, according to actuarial tables, is probably going to be our next president for 30 years. He's going to have a long-term rehabilitation strategy. This is part of it. Moving into Harlem last week was it. He's going to be giving lots of speeches on AIDS in Africa, Third World debt repayment, things like that.

He's -- in addition to making a lot of money, he's going to try to slowly rebuild his credibility. This book is going to be a piece of it. It will probably come out, I would guess, just about the time of the mid-term elections next year.

KAGAN: Our audience is already buzzing about whether or not they would buy the book, whether they would read the book.

We want to hear from two audience members.

First, Jeff from Arkansas.

Would you buy it? Would you read it?

JEFF: No, I wouldn't buy it. If it were laying around somewhere, I might read parts of it, just to the see what he had to say. But no, I wouldn't buy it to read.

KAGAN: You wouldn't, but Davis, would you?

DAVIS: Yes, I would.

KAGAN: Why would you?

DAVIS: First off, he was the president of the United States. Therefore, he is entitled to some respect. And the information that he would put out into his memoirs would be excellent reading.

KAGAN: The conversation will continue.

Some members of our audience agreeing with that. The conversation's going to continue.

Nora Rawlinson, I want to thank you for telling us who will be publishing this book and for giving us an inside look at the world of publishing, to explain to us exactly that works.

As we go to break, here's our first e-mail of the day. This one from Coos Bay, Oregon: "Read Bill's book? You've got to be kidding. If one cannot trust what he says, why should one trust what he writes."

We want to hear from you. Send us e-mail. And call us as well.

We will take a quick break and be back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE. We're talking about the book deal that former president is setting up with Knopf. We know that that's who will be publishing his memoirs.

We have not heard the amount he'll receive for that. We're thinking somewhere in the neighborhood, sources are saying, around $8 million. Still more ahead on that.

Meanwhile, today, we're talking about whether you would even want to read this book. We're getting some e-mail in. Let's take a look at this one, from Leesburg, Florida. An e-mailer before the break said no way. This person is saying, "I would consider it a privilege to read Clinton's memoirs. I'll buy the book as soon as it comes to market. Eight million dollars is not enough to pay him for all that he's done for this country."

Some people in our audience are agreeing with that, but as we heard during the break, some people are not agreeing.

Betsy, you had a comment about respect.

BETSY: I just knew that Ronald Reagan always stepped in the Oval Office with a suit and a tie in, and we know what Clinton did in the Oval Office -- so how can any of us respect him or believe what he writes? He had no respect in the American people and the office he held.

DAVIS: It's amazing, to me, if I may comment, that that individual wouldn't comment on the fact that former President Reagan didn't talk to his daughter for 20 years, and had another natural son, that he didn't talk to. Everybody can judge others in family situation.

Bill and Hillary Clinton raised a wonderful daughter. They have a wonderful family, and whatever personal faults Bill Clinton has, that lady doesn't reflect what I said was two-thirds of the American people. She's, obviously, in the minority of one-third who believe that.

When Bill Clinton left office, eight years after he came into the presidency, he left a better country, and there's no denying that.

KAGAN: All right, Lanny, clearly, there are some people who don't agree and support former President Clinton as much as you do. We have a couple of callers on the phone.

Caller, what do you think? What do you think about the book? Would you read it? Would you buy it?

CONSTANCE: Excuse me?

KAGAN: Constance, go ahead. Constance, are you with us?

We are going to work on the phones.

Meanwhile, we're going to get some other comments here.

Here is Debbie from Pennsylvania.

DEBBIE: I want to respond to that gentleman. He was talking about Ronald Reagan and his relationship with his daughter. He how can he say Bill Clinton was showing any family values at all by lying to his wife and his wife and having an extramarital affair. How could that be respecting your child or your family. I am sorry.

DAVIS: May I respond to that?

KAGAN: Go ahead, Lanny?

DAVIS: If that young woman is in a position to judge other people's private lives, then more power to her. But I was saying that if you ask Chelsea Clinton about her relationship with the father, you will find a family unit in Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea Clinton that most people would envy and admire.

KAGAN: Let's go back to the phones, which I think are working better now.

Marcel, in Tennessee, what did you want to say?

MARCEL: I just want to say that yes, I will buy Bill Clinton's book.

KAGAN: Why?

MARCEL: Why? Because I feel like his side should be told. And I am tired of his personality and his accomplishments being narrowed down to Monica Lewinsky. He's so much more than that. We had a terrific economy. He has been a terrific leader, and I'm sick of this voyeuristic, "Enquirer" magazine-type mentality that reduces him down to that.

Past leaders have not been paragons of virtue, so I deny anybody to say that they were, from Jefferson on up. You know?

KAGAN: Marcel, in Tennessee, thank you for that comment.

I think Ken, in Missouri, has a different comment. He send us this e-mail: "I wouldn't waste my money on Bill Clinton's book. We all know it will just be more lies. He will never admit how he disgraced the presidency.

John, let's bring you back in here. How much do you think of the personal side Bill Clinton will talk about in this book, and how much do you think it will be policy and his vision for world peace?

FUND: I think there will be a chapter in which he will make some regrets about some of his behavior and perhaps some of the scandals. I don't think the pardons, however, will figure in it. I do hope there is a chapter that would follow up on Lanny's book, about telling the truth early and telling it often, and I think I would like to hear Bill Clinton's explanation of why he didn't follow Lanny Davis' advice on public relations.

And as Bill Clinton said, you're going to have the truth sooner rather than later, and more rather than less. He didn't follow Lanny's advice, and I think his administration and his credibility suffered as a result.

KAGAN: Do you agree, Lanny?

DAVIS: First of all, I wish I had the advance that President Clinton is getting for his book.

Look, it was very easy to give somebody advice about a private relationship that he was very embarrassed to tell the truth about -- and I do wish, and I think he probably wishes, that he had told the truth earlier. That having been said, nobody, I think, expressed himself in public in a more painful and honest fashion, ultimately, than Bill Clinton, and he paid harshly for what happened when he finally owned up to it.

My question is why is there a focus on that issue when his presidency and what he did for the country -- the very fact that the poorest people in our country -- some of the faces you saw in Harlem -- the poorest, most needy people in this country look at President Clinton as one of the great presidents, who spoke for them. And if nothing else in his presidency, we should remember that.

FUND: Lanny, I might make one explanation. First of all, it wasn't entirely a personal matter, because the president was impeached. He was and only the second president in the nation's history to be impeached. It clearly was not just a personal matter. You can even talk to Democrats who wanted to censure Bill Clinton -- who admitted that lying under oath and trying to obstruct justice was what many Democrats in the Senate privately admitted happened. It may not have been something they wanted to convict him on, but they wanted to censure him. That is not just a private act.

(CROSSTALK)

DAVIS: Let's not replay the impeachment debate.

FUND: Because you don't want to argue it, I know.

DAVIS: I respect my friend John Fund's views on that, but let's remember that a majority Republican Senate did not agree with what John Fund just said.

FUND: How does a 50-50 vote come to become a majority, Lanny?

DAVIS: A majority did not agree with you. Fifty votes is not a majority. Even of Republicans, 10 of them disagreed with you on voting to acquit on obstruction, and 5 of them disagreed with you on voting to acquit on perjury.

But I do agree, and President Clinton agrees, that what he did was wrong. He's paid harshly for it, but it hasn't affected, I believe, the judgment of history on what a great president he was.

KAGAN: Gentlemen, I'm going to call a time out here, we want to here from our folks at home, ask them to get on the Internet to CNN.com, our TALKBACK site.

The question of the day, the poll we want to hear from you: Would you read Bill Clinton's memoirs? Go online, vote and we'll tell you the results at the end of the hour.

Still ahead: Can't get enough? This is a wild idea -- is it worth changing the Constitution so that Bill Clinton could run again? Ah! E-mails will be coming in on that one, and we'll talk more just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE.

We are continuing what is turning out to be quite a hot topic today. Former president Bill Clinton striking a deal to write his memoirs. Would you read them or pay any money for his book? People definitely feel strongly one way or the other.

We're going to add to our conversation now, by bringing in two more guests. First, historian Douglas Brinkley.

Doug, good to see you.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, HISTORIAN: Nice to be here.

KAGAN: Since you are a resident historian here we are going to talk about something that Chris Mathews wrote in a column in "The San Francisco Chronicle." He basically said, let's end the two-term limit on presidents. Quickly, with Bill Clinton back on the political stage, why should a 22nd Amendment stop 21st century Americans from having the president we want. Before we get the tempers flaring here. First be a historian for us and explain the 22nd Amendment.

BRINKLEY: The 22nd Amendment came after the advent of Franklin Roosevelt winning four consecutive terms, and there was a feeling that you could have a demagogue as president -- what if somebody stayed for eight terms? So it became a movement for the 22nd Amendment to limit it to two terms. Hence Bill Clinton can never run for president again.

I think that there would be a great outrage if someone tried to overturn that. I think we're there. Chris Matthews is good at stirring up things. It's fun to talk about. But the 22nd Amendment is there to give other people a chance at the presidency, and so we don't have somebody who might stay on for 20 years and kind of limit the democratic process.

KAGAN: Let's stir things up with Kim Alfano. Let's add a lady to this panel here. She is a Republican consultant.

Kim, good to see you.

KIM ALFANO, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: Hi. Thanks for having me.

KAGAN: I bet that you will be right out there trying to get the 22nd Amendment changed, won't you, Kim?

ALFANO: Not a chance. I think that Chris Mathews is nervous that Bill Clinton will try to take his job. He may be a good talk show host, but I don't think that he would make a good president again. I think we should just let that be the past.

KAGAN: Kim, what do you think about this book? Would you like to read it?

ALFANO: You know, as someone who just wants to keep up on what has gone on, sure, I will probably read it. Do I want to give my money to Bill Clinton? Probably not.

KAGAN: You can check it out from a library, maybe.

ALFANO: That's right, I'll get it from the library, a high-jet copy from the Internet.

KAGAN: There's that, too.

ALFANO: Yeah. But, you know, I think that it's predictable and what else is he going to do? I think that he misses being in the limelight and so, it's the dead of summer, he's getting a little bit of coverage.

KAGAN: But come on, almost -- every former president writes his memoirs.

ALFANO: Sure. KAGAN: That's a given, that's not just wanting attention.

ALFANO: I don't think there's anything wrong for him doing that.

KAGAN: Doug, from a historical perspective, what's the difference between a president writing his memoirs and actually getting a good historical picture of the presidency.

BRINKLEY: Well, you're always the hero of your own autobiography. As a historian, when I write books I use them constantly. Whether I'm writing on the Civil War and I use Grant's, or the Progressive Era, and I use T.R.'s autobiography, or even Vietnam and I use Richard Nixon's autobiography. So it's extraordinarily valuable resource.

And what Bill Clinton will do, is not just not focus on the impeachment and Monica Lewinsky, obviously. I am interested of reading his perspective on Bosnia and Northern Ireland, or his meetings with Nelson Mandela, and it will add new anecdotes to 1990s political culture all over the world, so I think that it will be an extraordinarily important book.

My fear is that Bill Clinton's taking a lot of money (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and hence, it will be somewhat shallow. Ronald Reagan's memoir is quite lame. It's called "An American Life." A better model for him would be some of the secretary of states, like Henry Kissinger, who has a wonderful 3-volume study and Dean Acheson, Truman's secretary of state, and Truman had a two-volume history, Eisenhower had a two-volume, and you might see Bill Clinton wanting to break his life story broken up into two, because some of his real drama is his rise from Hope, Arkansas, where he was so poor and from a broken family.

KAGAN: Why does it have to be one book? Jimmy Carter's written a number of books as former president. Richard Nixon wrote a number of books, as well.

BRINKLEY: There's one book that's considered "The Presidential Memoir," where he will have access to things in the White House that a scholar like myself will not get. And I will end up footnoting him. One of the things that the media hasn't picked up in the last months of the Clinton White House, the on-doing all of the pardons, they had put together each department in the Clinton White House, has made a big, fat report about 1,000 pages, whether it's the NSC or the Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, Clinton will have the first crack at those documents.

Hence, his book will be I think very historically accurate, because it will have the documents there, but when it gets to the personal, he'll be doing his typical spin.

KAGAN: All right, let's go to the phones. I think we have Dan on the phone.

DAN: Yes.

KAGAN: Go ahead. Where are you calling from?

DAN: New Jersey.

KAGAN: OK.

DAN: I can't believe that anybody would buy this man's book, or want him to serve another term. I mean, he was a good president. But he proved himself totally untrustworthy, and he should have been impeached for the adultery alone.

KAGAN: And yet he wasn't.

ALFANO: It will be good fantasy, Dan. It will be novelesque. You know, just read it as you would one of the J.R. Tolkien novels or something.

KAGAN: Go ahead, Lanny. I hear you there. Go ahead.

DAVIS: One thing about the Bill Clinton history and memoir, that I am looking forward to -- and I'd be interested in Doug's comments on this -- this is a president who is truly a great writer. He didn't depend on speech writers, probably to the vain of a lot of speech writers, he wrote most of his own speeches. He is a gifted writer.

If he weren't president, he could have been a journalist and maybe even a historian, Doug. So I think the writing of this book will be outstanding, because it will be Bill Clinton.

FUND: I agree with Lanny. And one chapter that I am looking forward to is a chapter called Settling Scores. Bill Clinton had a lot of pent-up anger and resentment against a lot of his political adversaries. And he said, when I am not going to talk about these people in the White House, he told that as -- told us that in many press conferences, he said I will wait until afterwards, so the Settling Scores chapter, whether it's Newt Gingrich or Ken Starr or people like that, that will be fascinating reading. That will be the most sellable aspects of the book.

KAGAN: And you think in some ways...

DAVIS: You'll need a good editor, Doug. John, we will need a good editor on those sections.

FUND: I will volunteer.

KAGAN: Kim, go ahead.

ALFANO: How much -- the question will be, how much of this will be hubris? How much will be, let's talk about me? And how much will actually be policy? I think that Bill Clinton himself is even enamored with his sort of acting skills and his spin skills, and I think he finds himself the best political pundit. So I wonder how much will be, how great I was when I was out there shaking hands and things like that, and how much will actually be insight.

KAGAN: Doug, I want to get Doug here on Lanny's point about Bill Clinton being a great writer. What do you think about that?

BRINKLEY: I am not sure that I agree with Lanny. He's a good writer, and I think this gives him an opportunity to do a very, very important book. I hope he does the important book.

We're kidding ourselves if we don't think this will be a policy book. People that are looking for stories about Monica Lewinsky's blue dress will get a very short supply, just like at presidential libraries. You don't go to the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda and expect to see walls on Watergate. I think he will try to show what he did in his administration, the domestic renewal, some of the projects that mean a lot to him, and it will be very much in line with Gerald Ford's book, "A Time To Heal" and Jimmy Carter's, "Keeping Faith."

Both of those books -- both unpopular presidents -- Ford and Carter, those books became No. 1 on the best-seller's list. You'll see Bill Clinton's book No. 1 for quite awhile. He'll be on the cover of "Time" or "Newsweek." He'll be on "LARRY KING."

KAGAN: He'll be on "CNN LIVE THIS MORNING." That will be his first stop.

BRINKLEY: "CNN LIVE TODAY." Yeah, the point I'm trying to say, this is not a Gennifer Flowers book. This is going to be a book trying to understand the domestic and foreign policy in the 1990s by a man who knows it as well as anybody in the United States. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and what they have to say id always of interest.

KAGAN: OK, before we go to break here, we want to get our audience members in. Here's Tara from Florida.

TARA: I just think that the one thing that everyone will probably agree with is that we're all curious about Bill Clinton. And we want to know what it is about, whether it's budget surplus or deficit or his private life, anything. We're just curious, so we want to know. So we'll probably end up reading the book anyways.

KAGAN: People probably will.

Let's show you this one e-mail as we go to break. From M.L. Baldwin in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida writes: "They'd have to pay me $9 million to read anything that Bill Clinton has to say."

More e-mail and more comments just ahead. We'll take a quick break and talk about what else president -- former President Clinton will be doing with his ex-presidency. Stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS ASKEW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If President Clinton moved to your neighborhood, what would you do?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd invite him in for a beer, maybe a stogie.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would have him to come over and have some ribs with us and some greens and some really good Southern hospitality.

ASKEW: Soul food.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Soul food, that's exactly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'd probably invite him out for a round of golf and try to get as much inside information as I could.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not in my backyard. I'm from Texas, and we're Bush people there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, they'd have to change religions. I'm a Catholic priest, and so he'd have to go to Confession first.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE. I'm Daryn Kagan, filling in today for Bobbie Battista.

We are talking about the book deal that former President Clinton has struck up with Knopf, the publishing house that will be publishing his memoirs. We don't know exactly how much. We expect in the millions of dollars, and it is for worldwide rights, not just here in the U.S.

Which brings to us to Genai's comment. He was talking during the break -- and what would you like to say?

GENAI: Well, first of all, I think the book is going to be a global hit -- I mean, the money they will make.

But that's not point. We're talking too much -- concentrating about here in America. But if you look around the world, India, Bangladesh -- anywhere in the world that Bill Clinton is so popular after his presidency. So people around the world are really interested to read what he got to say. So let's talk about that. And I'm sure -- I mean, money-wise it will be a winner.

DAVIS: Daryn?

KAGAN: Yes, go ahead.

DAVIS: It is interesting -- and I'm glad that comment has been made -- that even John Fund will admit that right now the most popular American president around the world is Bill Clinton. The level of both recognition and popularity, whether it's the Western governments or in the Pacific Rim or in the subcontinent or the underdeveloped world. Bill Clinton -- Northern Ireland, the Middle East, you name it, made an imprint on the peoples of the world, especially the underdeveloped peoples of the world in a way that I think no other president, perhaps in American history, made.

(CROSSTALK) FUND: Lanny, I appreciate your saying what I think, but what is you data? Please give me your statistics or your facts to back that up. I'm waiting.

DAVIS: You're so intelligent and fair-minded I thought you would agree with what I just said.

FUND: I'd like some statistics and some data to back up that statement.

(CROSSTALK)

FUND: ... Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan might have some disagreements with you on that, but do you have any statistics or data?

DAVIS: Well, I think anecdotally the statistics and data probably would emerge through public opinion polls on popularity of...

FUND: So do you have them, Lanny?

DAVIS: But I don't have that data, but I do have leaders of the Western European Alliance, who still talk about Bill Clinton's popularity, from Tony Blair across Western Europe. I certainly have evidence in the subcontinent as well as in the underdeveloped world of his popularity based upon his travels and what people say, John.

But no public opinion data yet. But I suspect that when there are public opinion polls taken, they will show Bill Clinton as immensely popular around the world.

KAGAN: Let's check in on our chat room. And Larry from North Carolina has been monitoring that for us.

Larry, what are some of the comments you're hearing from viewers as they chat along with us?

LARRY: Well. it's (sic) been more people that said they would buy the book. There've been quite a few that said they wouldn't. One person said they would buy 20 copies for Christmas. Another one said: "No, I don't plan to waste time reading the book, the title should be `staining of the president.'" "Find Clinton's book at the bookstore under Romance." "I can't wait for the book to come out. Monica should write the forward to the book."

It's just been a lot of slams, personally, at Clinton and at Bush. This Web site kind of goes all over the board here.

But, probably right now I'd say there's be more purchasers than non-purchasers.

KAGAN: Than there would -- and what that shows, and, of course, it's easy to make comments like that when you're anonymous in a chatroom, but Bill Clinton is a man that stirs up very strong feelings on both sides.

(CROSSTALK)

BRINKLEY: Can I interject something?

KAGAN: Go ahead Doug.

BRINKLEY: I think it's telling that he signed with Knopf. Knopf is one of the most distinguished publishers, and they're known for doing extraordinarily serious fiction and nonfiction. And I think that's an indication. When it's a Knopf book you're going to be getting a book that's very policy driven, not settling scores.

KAGAN: Versus like -- what would be another publishing house...

BRINKLEY: Oh, I think it's Random House. Knopf is part of Random House empire, but it's the serious brand name within the Random House -- the Random House sometimes does serious, but sometimes they'll be more sensational.

Clinton's going to come in as a heavyweight president. He wants to...

FUND: But Daryn, Professor Kennedy's (sic) point is, I think, indicating, perhaps, some of the commercial limitations here. There's -- something has happened in the last five years, it's called the Internet. You can now, basically, put up chunks of almost any book on the Internet, including the most interesting parts.

If this is a policy driven book, I suspect the parts that are of most public interest are going to be on the Internet. That will reduce sales. And that may not be fair, but I think that this is not going be as commercial a success as everybody thinks, because of the Internet.

KAGAN: Kim, you're trying to get in here. And that's obviously a challenge that all authors today, and all...

ALFANO: Yes, I would say that this is the first president who's kind out of that rock-star era -- the era of massive spin and image- driven sort of politics.

And this will be a big test for Bill Clinton because, you know, Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford, they've written serieses of books -- series of books that have talked about different sort of aspects of their presidency in great depth. And they're very academic, and they're studied in college.

Bill Clinton has got to do this very serious book to start, but I think you'll find some people will buy it -- I hope the cover is pretty to put it on their coffee table and say they have Bill Clinton's serious book.

I think policy wonks and politicos like us will read it, maybe get through the first few chapters, if I was being honest, and then probably put it down because we're busy. And I think that history professors and autobiographers will comb through it to find things.

But, you know, in terms of massive, rock star crazy popularity, this isn't Madonna's picture book.

(CROSSTALK)

KAGAN: It is for Doug Brinkley. He's going to be in heaven.

(CROSSTALK)

ALFANO: I'm not sure what that says about Doug. You should be nicer to him.

KAGAN: He's a history geek, but he'd probably be the first to admit it.

Let's get some more audience members in here -- Fred.

FRED: yes, I was just going to say that everybody gives him such credit for being such a popular president overseas and his popularity overseas, but what was his foreign policy? I mean, let's talk about what he actually did. It's not about going overseas and shaking a bunch of hands...

DAVIS: Excuse me.

KAGAN: Lanny, let's let Doug get in there.

What do you think are the significant foreign policy...

BRINKLEY: Richard Holbrooke wrote a memoir about Bosnia, which won, by "The New York Times," one of the great books of the year. Holbrooke, of course, being throughout the Clinton administration. I think Clinton on Bosnia, on Kosovo, Iraq -- his relationship with world leaders ranging from Tony Blair to Mandela to Saddam Hussein is all going to be of interest.

There is a lot of -- I don't think it was a great foreign policy, the Clinton years. I don't think people go out and look at it as great. But it was a time of great trade policy, and I think reflecting on Clinton putting trade policy at the heart of our foreign policy, could be a very interesting chapter.

Is that going to be Madonna-like best selling status? I don't know. But it will have a lot of interest with a lot of people in the business community, political community, and by Clinton getting out there and hawking the book himself on TV and using the magazines and newspapers, it will become a very big book. Whether it will make its money, I'm sure it will, whether it will become -- for two years on the best-seller list, I doubt it. I think it's going to be too serious for that.

KAGAN: Some of our audience members are thinking even beyond the book and what former President Clinton might be doing. Here's Kathy from New York.

Kathy, you have an idea for President Clinton.

KATHY: Yes, before he runs for his third term as presidency, I think he'd win the most hardest job in the United States in a heartbeat, and that's mayor of New York City, because we want him. Welcome, Bill! Your wife got to stay. We want you in the city. Yeah, Bill!

DAVIS: Can't afford the pay cut.

KAGAN: There you go. That will bring up our next topic when we talk about what else does Bill Clinton have to do after writing the book? There's a lot to being a former president of the United States, and we will talk about some of those ideas, just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE.

We're continuing our discussion about the upcoming memoirs from former President Bill Clinton, announced today he signed with a publishing house. We don't know how much, we expect somewhere in the range of $8 to 9 million for the worldwide rights to that book.

We were on a subject before we went to break here, about what comes after the book. Doug Brinkley, let's bring you back in here. I think it's fair to say, non-partisan, that Jimmy Carter has set the standard of how you can really make use of a former presidency.

BRINKLEY: Absolutely. He used the presidency as a stepping stone for greater achievement, and he's raised the bar of what it means to be an ex-president, and that's a hard bar for Bill Clinton to reach. Carter left office with his moral integrity in tact, hence he built on a lot of presidential achievements: the Panama Canal treaties, so he was able to go be an election monitor in Panama or the Camp David Accords, Carter's role with Arafat and things in the Middle East.

I think Bill Clinton has already told us what he will do. He will focus on international AIDS, he will work here domestically on race issues and education. And these are things that mean a lot to him. I know he's itching to get back into the diplomatic fray, in places like Northern Ireland, which he worked so tirelessly to get a peace there. And he's respected by people there. And I think a smart administration down the line, even a Bush administration, should consider at least consulting Bill Clinton on U.S. foreign policy in places like Northern Ireland, where he knows more than just about anybody. He is a policy wonk.

Just because you don't like a person -- a lot of people didn't like Nixon, Bill Clinton was not a Nixon-person, but he consulted Nixon before his death on Russia. And I think the Bush administration should use what Bill Clinton knows, and consult him of certain aspects of international affairs.

KAGAN: Kim, could you ever see that happening?

ALFANO: No. I think that will be a big hurdle for him, because again, I think that his -- I bet we watch his presidency be more like, you know, an older, you know, movie star where you see him going in very public venues to try to raise awareness about things like AIDS abroad, and causes that way, testifying before Congress.

But I don't think when you think of Bill Clinton, people think that's the policy guy. When you think of Jimmy Carter, you certainly think, you know, he was so smart, he couldn't articulate what he wanted to do in the presidency. I think for a lot of people it's a leap to get beyond Bill Clinton's flash, and really -- you know, other than having worked with him everyday, to get to that sort of intellect you guys are talking about. I really think he has that, you know, more of a sort of style, bringing attention to things rather than being a really substantive, deep thinking policy wonk, and I doubt George Bush goes to him.

DAVIS: I have to disagree a little with that, but let me repeat what I said earlier, what I believe really will be his priority: no president, may be going back to FDR, is more revered and admired by the people who are least well-off in our society. That tells you a lot about Bill Clinton and his presidency. And his post presidency I believe will focus on especially the problems of race and poverty, that remain amidst our affluence in America and abroad, will focus on the poverty and the impoverishment of the underdeveloped world, the plague of AIDS, and perhaps, his ability to bring peace to places that need his auspices.

FUND: Let me combine Lanny's point and Kim's point, you reach a happy medium. I think Bill Clinton, who is the fund-raiser extraordinaire for the Democratic Party while he was president can be fund raiser extraordinaire for all kinds of good causes as an ex- president, because he is charisma. He does bring controversy, he brings people that like him and don't like to the meeting halls. They'll buy tickets for all kinds of worthy events. So Bill Clinton can do a lot of good, simply because he is such a stellar figure.

KAGAN: Time to go back to the audience. Rashandra from Missouri.

RASHANDRA: I just needed to clarify the situation. We are discussing a book by Bill Clinton, the ex-president or Monica Lewinsky's lover, because every president, ex-president and future, has caused conflict for the country, whether it was financial, foreign policy, sending them off to war.

The problem that we seem to have with Bill Clinton is sexual content, since it's such a strong issue in the country. Do we need to decide which one is sexual or was actually best for the country?

BRINKLEY: I think the answer to that is, Bill Clinton will write the book he wants to write, and I'm sure that he's not going to want to be talking about his sexual life, after we've lived with it for so long in this book. Whether he will be forced to on talk shows, when he's promoting the book, he's obviously going to have a chapter that deals with some of these affairs. There will be some (UNINTELLIGIBLE), but it's not going to be that kind of book.

Incidentally, this is just the presidential memoir. I imagine Bill Clinton in his career will end up writing ten, 15 more books on all sorts of -- some on foreign policy, some on childhood reminiscences, just like Jimmy Carter's done.

KAGAN: Even Jimmy Carter wrote a book on poetry.

BRINKLEY: Exactly, and Carter's writing a novel right now on the Revolutionary War in Georgia.

FUND: But you know, Doug, Bill Clinton did write a book while he was president and it sold about 30,000 copies. So it's not necessarily the case, that did -- I think the memoir will sell well, but it's not the case that the 10th book or the 11th will necessarily sell well. Bill Clinton wrote books while he was president, they were promoted, but they didn't buy them.

BRINKLEY: You know, I'll tell you the difference, because I wrote a biography of President Carter and I learned this: when you get a live ex-president that is such a rare site when they go into the Barnes and Noble or Borders, you get such giant lines. And everybody wants a presidential autograph and everybody wants to see that just promoting the book and the access that an ex-president has, almost guarantees that the book will hit the best-seller list.

(CROSSTALK)

FUND: We are talking about the 10th or 11th book, I think even those will continue. I think any presidential book hits the list, even if it's by a president that is not popular, for a while. I'm not saying that's going to be a mainstay.

ALFANO: I think sometimes that's all they have to do to stay in the public fray. I think what is going to be so disappointing to Bill Clinton is not to have that rock star draw everywhere. And I had the opportunity to interview Richard Nixon and I was really nervous, and I went up to him and I said, when we were done, I said I know you are very busy, you're the ex-president of the United States, I wanted to get your autograph on something.

And he remarked, well, I'm an ex-president, I have nothing else to do, sit down. And we ended up sitting and talking about politics, and it was amazing to me how this person, who so hounded by so many people, was so ready to just hang out and chat. And I think Bill Clinton will have to reconcile that now. He will have to figure out maybe I just need to find myself, write more books, hang out, get inside my own brain.

KAGAN: Go Kim, maybe you will have a chance to sit down and talk with Bill Clinton and get his autograph. I know you are dying to do that.

ALFANO: Different experience, I'll tell you that.

KAGAN: We'll take a break, but before we go to break, do you ever think about how we put this show TALKBACK LIVE on the air? You can see for yourself and get to know the folks behind the scenes, go to cnn.com/talkback.

Would you buy and would you read Bill Clinton's memoir? That's the question. We will check that vote when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE.

Talking once again, would you buy -- would you read Bill Clinton's memoir? We will check the on-line viewer vote in just a moment. We want to get a final audience comment, we have some communications students from the University of Missouri, who want our jobs, so we're going to put them on television. Yes.

Edward, knock them out.

EDWARD: Yes, she said during the break about how nobody really talked about Monica. I can't stand people who do that, yes, we did talk about Monica like most of the time. So don't backtrack and say, we don't like him because he was just a bad president, a caller called in and said he was a great president.

But then you bring up the Monica thing, so yes, it is the Monica thing, and that's what everybody mostly talks about.

KAGAN: Let's ask our panel. Is this presidency to be forever marked by the Monica Lewinsky scandal? Or, as time goes by, will people see it for other and greater things? Or lesser things?

BRINKLEY: I think he'll be forever scarred with not Monica, but with impeachment, the big I. It will be something Bill Clinton has to live with, but I think over a period of time, his accomplishments will look greater, particularly, just the fact that nobody will bemoan the 1990s, it was a time of unprecedented economic growth in this country, and so, the recollections and nostalgia will kick in, and I think Bill Clinton will be there to reap those benefits years from now.

KAGAN: Debbie from Pennsylvania.

DEBBIE: It's not fact that he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. It's the fact that he lied to the nation and made a laughing stock of the White House. It has nothing to do with his personal life or us judging him, but he's holding an image as a president of the United States for us to all look up to. And it's just not proper to do that to the White House.

ALFANO: I think Debbie is absolutely right. The bottom line is: if you know Bill Clinton, you don't know him for his brain necessarily. And it's going to be a hard thing to get...

FUND: Worse than that -- I -- worse than Monica Lewinsky were the pardons, because Bill Clinton has never given us any satisfactory explanation of the pardons. There's no one who can explain the Marc Rich pardon, even Lanny Davis can't do that. That is the lasting stain for the historians, not necessarily popular culture.

DAVIS: Let me hopefully put everything in perspective again to the same young woman that took a shot at his private life. The American people are smarter than that. Two-thirds of the American people, when he left office, said this man did great things for our country. Eight years ago, we were worse off. We had deficits. We are better off, and historians will judge that more than anything else.

FUND: You never mentioned that those numbers of two-thirds dropped precipitously with the pardon news. You never mention what the polls were two months after that.

DAVIS: Not on job performance, on personal ratings. And I was critical of those pardons. On job performance, he left this country better off, poor people, middle-class people, and even wealthy people agree with that.

KAGAN: OK, Lanny, we want to check our online poll. The question, would you read Bill Clinton's memoirs? Yes, 58 percent. No, 42 percent.

We will have to see, it's not coming out for a couple more years. We want to thank all our guests in participating in our conversation, it did make for a lively afternoon of discussion.

Douglas Brinkley, Lanny Davis, Kim Alfano, and John Fund. Thank you all at home.

I'm Daryn Kagan, certainly hoping that Bobbie Battista will be feeling better and be back with you again tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. Eastern for more TALKBACK LIVE.

I will see you tomorrow morning on CNN "LIVE THIS MORNING".

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