Domestic policy issues are neglected by the president only at considerable risk, since policies in health care, education, welfare, the environment, and civil rights deeply affect the lives of ordinary Americans.
This groundbreaking book on White House domestic policymaking is the first to draw upon both the experiences of former presidential advisers and the expertise of leading presidency scholars to explain how policies reflect campaign promises, emerge and evolve, and are sold to the American people. Covering six administrations from Richard Nixon through George W. Bush-with ample references to Barack Obama-it interweaves those insider and outsider perspectives to convey an eye-opening understanding of the policymaking process and the factors that influence it.
The contributors here offer an unusual balance of practical wisdom and social science knowledge. Their insights address a number of key questions throughout the book: What role does the presidential campaign have in shaping the subsequent activity of the White House? How are the specifics of domestic policy, and priorities, established once a president is elected? Who, and what, is routinely involved in trying to sell domestic policy preferences to the American people? And what lessons can be learned from past successes and failures to enhance the ability of future presidents to succeed?
"If there is a single overarching lesson to be drawn from this volume," observes contributor Bruce Miroff, "it might be the following: domestic policymaking is hard." These policy advisers know firsthand just how hard it is, and the lack of partisanship in their comments is striking and reassuring. Their accounts of lessons learned from the Oval Office will be especially valuable for years to come for scholars and students who wish to be acquainted with the real job of governing at home.

The inner life of every White House is veiled in mystery. Only a select few partake in the sensitive discussions of the Oval Office or the casual banter about high policy and low politics conducted over the engine roar of Air Force One. The privilege of the president's confidence depends on the confidentiality of such exchanges while the president's term endures. Inside the Clinton White House, however, provides a front-row seat to that previously unknown history of the 42nd presidency. In the decade after Bill Clinton left the White House, scores of his political advisors, senior White House staff, and cabinet officials recorded oral history interviews with scholars working with the acclaimed Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. The contents of these interviews are published for the first time in this volume, selected and edited by Russell Riley, co-chair of the Oral History Program. The portraite of the Clinton presidency provided here is based on some 400 hours of conversations with more than sixty people. These interviews track Bill Clinton's emergence as a national political figure with the New Democrat movement, take the reader inside the hectic 1992 campaign, and then detail the ups and downs of life inside the Clinton White House as experienced by those who were there. Extended sections of the book are devoted to domestic policy (including reforms of the health care and welfare systems), foreign policy (including military interventions in Haiti and the Balkans), politics in the Clinton years (including impeachment), and the key personalities of the time (including chapters on Al Gore and Hillary Rodham Clinton). These candid spoken accounts-history "with the bark off" in Lyndon Johnson's phrase-add color and nuance to our understanding of Bill Clinton and his administration, sometimes confirming and sometimes upending the conventional wisdom.

President Bill Clinton led one of the most influential and consequential White House tenures in recent memory. However, because of the office's traditional climate of confidentiality, many details of his behind-the-scenes activities have remained absent from the written record. How did the administration manage the horrific conflicts in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans that came to a head shortly after the President took the oath? What motivated the President to place First Lady Hillary Clinton at the helm of the ill-fated Health Security Act of 1993? And how did the President's closest confidantes and aides respond to the outbreak of the devastating scandal that nearly ended his presidency? Inside the Clinton White House offers an intimate perspective on these questions and many more, granting readers unprecedented access to the sensitive Oval Office banter that changed the course of history. Bringing together material from 400 hours of candid conversations with over sixty individuals, respected oral historian Russell L. Riley weaves this illuminating testimony with important contextual information to form an irresistible narrative, taking the reader from Clinton's first potential White House bid in 1988 to the final days of his remarkable and controversial career. Extended sections of the book are devoted to important domestic and foreign policy campaigns, the complicated politics of the President's two terms and impeachment, and portraits of important personalities in the administration, including Vice President Al Gore and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. These forthright and often surprising accounts add a layer of nuance to an iconic figure in America's recent history, as told in the words of the people who knew him best.

This book uses hundreds of hours of newly opened interviews and other sources to illuminate the life and times of the nation's forty-second president, Bill Clinton. Combining the authoritative perspective of these inside accounts with the analytic powers of some of America’s most distinguished presidential scholars, the essays assembled here offer a major advance in our collective understanding of the Clinton White House. Included are path-breaking chapters on the major domestic and foreign policy initiatives of the Clinton years, as well as objective discussions of political success and failure. 42 is the first book to make extensive use of previously closed interviews collected for the Clinton Presidential History Project, conducted by the Presidential Oral History Program of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. These interviews, recorded by teams of scholars working under a veil of strict confidentiality, explored officials’ memories of their service with President Clinton and their careers prior to joining the administration. Interviewees also offered political and leadership lessons they had gleaned as eyewitnesses to and shapers of history. Their spoken recollections provide invaluable detail about the inner history of the presidency in an age when personal diaries and discursive letters are seldom written. The authors producing this volume had first access to more than fifty of these cleared interviews, including sessions with White House chiefs of staff Mack McLarty and Leon Panetta, Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, National Security Advisors Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger, and a host of political advisors who guided Clinton into the White House and helped keep him there. This book thus provides a multidimensional portrait of Bill Clinton's administration, drawing largely on the observations of those who knew it best.ContributorsSpencer D. Bakich, University of RichmondBrendan J. Doherty, United States Naval AcademyPatrick T. Hickey, West Virginia UniversityElaine Kamarck, Center for Effective Public Management, Brookings InstitutionSidney M. Milkis, University of VirginiaMegan Moeller, University of Texas at AustinMichael Nelson, Rhodes College and the Miller Center, University of VirginiaBruce F. Nesmith, Coe CollegeBarbara A. Perry, Miller Center, University of VirginiaPaul J. Quirk, University of British ColumbiaRussell L. Riley, Miller Center, University of VirginiaAndrew Rudalevige, Bowdoin CollegeRobert A. Strong, Washington and Lee UniversitySean M. Theriault, University of Texas at Austin

This book uses hundreds of hours of newly opened interviews and other sources to illuminate the life and times of the nation's forty-second president, Bill Clinton. Combining the authoritative perspective of these inside accounts with the analytic powers of some of America's most distinguished presidential scholars, the essays assembled here offer a major advance in our collective understanding of the Clinton White House. Included are path-breaking chapters on the major domestic and foreign policy initiatives of the Clinton years, as well as objective discussions of political success and failure. 42 is the first book to make extensive use of previously closed interviews collected for the Clinton Presidential History Project, conducted by the Presidential Oral History Program of the University of Virginia's Miller Center. These interviews, recorded by teams of scholars working under a veil of strict confidentiality, explored officials' memories of their service with President Clinton and their careers prior to joining the administration. Interviewees also offered political and leadership lessons they had gleaned as eyewitnesses to and shapers of history. Their spoken recollections provide invaluable detail about the inner history of the presidency in an age when personal diaries and discursive letters are seldom written. The authors producing this volume had first access to more than fifty of these cleared interviews, including sessions with White House chiefs of staff Mack McLarty and Leon Panetta, Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, National Security Advisors Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger, and a host of political advisors who guided Clinton into the White House and helped keep him there. This book thus provides a multidimensional portrait of Bill Clinton's administration, drawing largely on the observations of those who knew it best.ContributorsSpencer D. Bakich, University of RichmondBrendan J. Doherty, United States Naval AcademyPatrick T. Hickey, West Virginia UniversityElaine Kamarck, Center for Effective Public Management, Brookings InstitutionSidney M. Milkis, University of VirginiaMegan Moeller, University of Texas at AustinMichael Nelson, Rhodes College and the Miller Center, University of VirginiaBruce F. Nesmith, Coe CollegeBarbara A. Perry, Miller Center, University of VirginiaPaul J. Quirk, University of British ColumbiaRussell L. Riley, Miller Center, University of VirginiaAndrew Rudalevige, Bowdoin CollegeRobert A. Strong, Washington and Lee UniversitySean M. Theriault, University of Texas at Austin