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American Morning

Former President Clinton Getting Big Bucks to Tell His Story

Aired August 07, 2001 - 09:37   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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The deal is done. Former President Bill Clinton will be getting some big bucks to tell his story.

It's a huge record book deal, and our Eileen O'Connor takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EILEEN O'CONNOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Is it his personal life...

WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Indeed, I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate.

O'CONNOR: ... or his politics that makes former President Bill Clinton's memoirs worth over $10 million, according to sources close to the ex-president. That's more than his wife's and more than the pope's, who had held the record with an $8.5 million advance for his bestseller. Robert Barnett negotiated the deal for worldwide rights with publishing company Alfred A. Knopf, and says the president has a lot to say.

ROBERT BARNETT, ATTORNEY FOR BILL CLINTON: The president has told me that he plans to write a comprehensive and candid book. With respect to specifically what's going to be in there, you'll have to buy it, because that's the name of the game.

O'CONNOR: Still, just how much can anyone expect him to say about Monica Lewinsky?

SARA NELSON, INSIDE.COM BOOKS EDITOR: There was always the sense with him that there's a real person in there, and that it's almost that sense of almost anything could happen. You know, he might just say something that's a little out of the box, it's a little unusual.

O'CONNOR: But most agree, not too far out, since aides view this book as part of a political reentry strategy for a former president who readily admits feeling sidelined.

CLINTON: Bye. You know, when you're not president anymore, people look at you funny when you walk by them in the airport. They say things like, "You look just like Bill Clinton." O'CONNOR: A tell-all book could also impact another political career, that of his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Still, Mr. Clinton's penchant for doing the unexpected has everyone hoping and his publishing company betting that this is going to be anything but boring.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Certainly, it's not going to be boring to our next guests, professor and presidential historian Doug Brinkley, joining us from New Orleans.

Doug, good to see you again.

DOUG BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Nice to see you.

KAGAN: Ten million dollars -- are you surprised by that number?

BRINKLEY: No, not a bit. Hillary, as you mentioned, got $8 million, so a little bit more for the president of the United States makes sense. The only thing of listening to your clip that I want to comment on is, we know what this book is going to look like. There's a tradition of presidential memoirs, dating back to the early founding fathers and throughout this whole century, and it's a serious policy book. It's the opening salvo of really trying to have your say, and put your administration into perspective and to make it look good for posterity.

KAGAN: So for folks just looking for all the scandal and what happened with Paula or Monica, you think they might be disappointed?

BRINKLEY: Very disappointed. What you might get is one little telling An anecdote about the Monica Lewinsky, a lot about, you know, felling Bill Clinton's pain, how I felt that day when they were voting for impeachment, or how I felt the day that I realized that, you know, I was going to have to testify. We'll get a little bit of that. There'll be a chapter on impeachment. That's it. You'll see more on Bosnia, more on Kosovo than you will on Monica.

KAGAN: Explain to us as a historian what is the difference of a book like this, which is a personal memoir, or something that you would do? history versus memoir?

BRINKLEY: Memoir is when the person tries to put themselves into the best light and tries to explain the rationale for what they did. In other words, it's the vanity book, in many ways, the memoir. It can at times be self-critical. As a biographer, we have to footnote everything. I want to see the document, I want to footnote it, and I just don't take Bill Clinton's take on something if I were to do a biography. I interview family, friends, enemies, foreign leaders, to kind of get a full portrait of him. You won't get that. This will be a traditional memoir, which I'm told, he's modeling the Dean Acheson's "Present at the Creation." He was secretary of state for Truman. That state won the Pulitzer, modeled off of Katharine Graham's memoir's a few years ago. Of course she recently died, of "Washington Post" fame, and that book also won a Pulitzer. He's looking for a Pulitzer Prize winning memoir that's a serious policy book.

KAGAN: Do you think that there is a significance in the publishing house that he went with?

BRINKLEY: Absolutely is. Knopf is one of the really premier serious brand-name, so to speak. I mean, they published people ranging from, you know, Toni Morrison, to some of the great Latin American writers, on and on, and I think he's in very, very good hands there. It would have been different if he had signed with Reagan books or even Public Affairs out of Washington. With Knopf, he is trying to do a "New Yorker"-ish, if you like, meaning "New Yorker" magazine, kind of writing style, and a book that's going have a great deal of longevity to it.

The key of the success of this book, number one, it needs to be financially successful. And number two, people like myself, historians years from now, want to take this book seriously. I don't think that there is a presidential memoir he is really modeling this one after, because we've had very few literate presidential memoirs with the exception of Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs, which were ghost written by Mark Twain.

KAGAN: So 2003 is going to be a really big year for the Clinton's, because both Bill and Hillary's book will be coming out the same year.

BRINKLEY: I think every year is going to be a pretty big year for the Clintons. But, yes, I believe that Hillary Clinton's book is going to come out in the spring, with Bill Clinton's coming out in the fall. And you know, when Jimmy Carter wrote his book, "Keeping Faith." And then Rosalyn Carter wrote hers, they used to have a competition, the Carters, because their books came out, who would stay in the best-seller list longer? Who stayed at number one longer? And actually Rosalyn Carter beat Jimmy Carter's bookkeeping faith (ph) out. So we'll have to wait and see what happens with Bill and Hillary.

KAGAN: We will have to see if a former first lady can repeat that feat indeed.

Douglas Brinkley, thanks for joining us today. Good to see you.

BRINKLEY: Thank you. Nice to see you.

KAGAN: Thank you.

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