I am sure the inside baseball of the Clinton presidency has its fascinations. Obviously it also is an instructive history that Obama and his supporters need to study, as the same villains make the same types of attacks (only better-organized this time).

Beyond that, I would rather spend more time re-examining what happened during the Bush presidency, because that is the garbage we're still trying to clean up (and no matter how much you sweet up the mess, it continues to soil everything in its midst).

It's hardly surprising that Democrats, too, have proven corrupt -- pawns of corporate interests who would gladly sell out their consituents as long as they can find a way to tell them, "I did this for you!" What is more surprising is our collective unwillingness to call out the Clintons for their own misdeeds throughout Bill's presidency. From reading Walsh's review/blog, it would seem Taylor Branch doesn't have a very critical eye, or maybe it's Walsh who finds little fault with Clinton's presidency.

Relatively speaking, Clinton was the good guy, but once we stop speaking relatively, we are forced to admit his failures. Was Clinton stymied by the Republican congress, or did he fail to fight them vigorously enough to "move the goalposts" where they belong? Clinton watered down his efforts to get them done, but what good did any of it do when George Bush came along to reverse Clinton's baby steps via giant leaps? What was Clinton's legacy but one of holding the barbarians at bay long enough to get out and look good?

I'll grant you that Newsweek's writer is a fool for wanting more on the Lewinsky scandal. The very idea that Clinton was different from many previous presidents is nuts. George Bush Sr. had an affair of his own ("the other Gennifer"), and the Reagans' history in California is anything but squeaky clean: They were known to smoke pot at parties, and Nancy Reagan had a reputation of "giving the best head in Hollywood." Jimmy "lust in my heart" Carter had his hands full with a redneck brother, UFO sightings and attacking rabbits; while Tricky Dick Nixon probably had his own little Chilean sex slaves pimped by Kissinger for all we know. Kennedy made Wilt Chamberlain look like a hermit, and you can go back from there to find skeletons in every previous presidential closet of the White House.

If anything Clinton's flings were mild stuff. He hit on a few women and then found one who really knew what he wanted, and he decided that being repressed and sexually frustrated was no way to run a country. Good for him. The Ken Starr investigations were indeed a witch hunt. The opposition to Clinton was underwritten by Richard Mellon Scaife, the American Enterprise Institute, and a cabal of other Machiavelli-loving, democracy-hating corporate assholes.

Clinton himself gave countless gifts to corporate America, and let's not forget that Hillary Clinton sat on the board of Wal-Mart for, what was it, 12, 16 years? It's no coincidence that Bill Clinton swung wide the doors of global trade, specifically to China, without any conditions for human rights, labor standards, product safety or anything else that would protect American consumers from the profit-making free-for-all. Small towns losing all character due to big-box stores? You can thank the Clintons. Their corporate deals greased the gears of the economic hydro-press we're all getting squeezed in today.

What does Taylor Branch's book say about NAFTA and other trade agreements? What does it say about Clinton's looking-the-other-way policy toward Israel as it pushed settlements farther and farther into West Bank (thanks, Madeleine Albright)? What does it say about Clinton's puss-out on fuel-efficiency standards for the U.S. auto industry? The prevalence of SUVs happened under Clinton's watch. We expected the above evils from Bush and Co.; we lie to ourselves that we got some of them from the Clintons.

Why the hagiographical attitude toward the Clintons, anyway? They're wizened and important in the current political war, and they're "likable enough," but should we really pretend they didn't do their share of fucking up? What, for example, was Hillary Clinton's pro-Iraq-war vote if not a fuck-up of extraordinary magnitude? Why was Bill Clinton dicking around by bombing Sudanese pharmaceutical factories and blowing up art galleries in Baghdad? (Clinton's random bombing to "punish" Hussein for planning an assassination on Bush Sr. ended up killing, among other people, one of Baghdad's most liberal and well-loved contemporary art curators). How did Clinton and Janet Reno manage to let a bunch of ATF yahoos massacre dozens of religious wackos and their children in Waco, Texas and not take any responsibility for it? Clinton's handling of foreign and domestic conflicts veered toward neglect.

And yet, Clinton wasn't nearly as venal and craven as his opponents, frothing-at-the-mouth jackals catering to mouth-breathing voters. We should remember Clinton as the lesser-evil he was, not the white-hat-wearing good guy who would have cleaned up the town if not for the posse of villains holding him at bay.

Don't be mean to Tracy.

Wait -- can somebody explain why this publishing house had TWO magazines that were completely devoted to females who are planning a wedding?

What is the different between a modern bride and an elegant bride, anyway? The contrast between the titles implies that modern brides are inelegant skanks.

These mags must have a really weird subscriber base too, appealing either to women who dream of having a wedding but never get asked out on dates, or to women who constantly marry and divorce due to some sort of Julia Roberts-related psychosis.