The Survivor, by John Harris, has been one of the best of the presidential biographies I've read. I read recently that it was considered one of the most accurate books about what it felt like and what happened inside the Clinton White House by by some of his insiders.

The book re-shaped many of my views of Clinton, with some wild swings in both directions. The Survivor is not like Woodward's "tick-tock" accounts (a phrase I learned in the book to describe the precisely chronological storytelling. Rather, it tackles topics by chapter, with the timeline roughly in place but with many chapters overlapping. It's a technique that works very well.

For me, I was blown away by how bad Clinton was as a manager of his own White House in the first two years of his presidency. The details of his affair with Monica Lewinsky were pretty shocking, too–not in any graphic sort of way, but in the absolute stupidity and arrogance. In the same way Democrats were upset with John Edwards when his affair was made public, asking, "What if he had our nomination right now?" the games Clinton was playing–once in public at a fundraiser–were just as unsettling.

I was also surprised that for all his reputation as a master politician how poor Clinton was at gauging the wind sometimes. He didn't foresee any potential controversy with his stance in 1992 (this was before Don't Ask Don't Tell) that gays should be able to serve in the military. On the flip side of that note, the book made it pretty clear that he was not always a slave to polls as he's often painted. What he was good at, was getting out of situations he'd gotten himself in to (hence, the title of the book).

In the policy arena, my respect for Clinton went up. NAFTA, his fiscal responsibility (however unwilling at times), and his foreign policy during his 2nd term all are noteworthy.

I came away from the book with a much better understanding of Clinton and his presidency, which is exactly what I've been looking for in my presidential biographies.

Now that I've finished the most recent three presidents, I'm going to jump back to the front of the line and read His Excellency, George Washington, which I'm treating as a follow-up to 1776, one of the best pieces of non-fiction I've read. After that, probably McCullough's John Adams. I watched the mini-series last year and now will read the book. After those two, I think I'll bounce forward again and tackle Herbert Walker Bush.