Mr. Williams, a former D.C. deputy bureau chief for The Boston Globe, had his impartiality called into question when, during an appearance on MSNBC, he said that Governor Mitt Romney appeared on Fox and Friends so often because he was most comfortable around other white people. (Apparently, being cognizant of race now constitutes a liberal bias.) The Washington Free Beacon flagged the video, and soon Breitbart.com and The Daily Caller unleashed their liberal media bias-sniffing hounds, scouring Mr. Williams's Twitter and uncovering one retweet of a lewd joke about Ann Romney and the following critique of Politico: "what’s most irritating is the overlay of blatant racism. that’s the secret sauce in the Politico shitburger."

Still, Mr. Williams seemed to part ways with Politico on good terms. "Joe is an experienced and respected journalist, with keen insights into politics," founder John Harris told Politico's Dylan Byers. "After nearly 30 years in the business, he has the authority and is ready to give voice to his insights and conclusions in a new setting."

Today, things took a turn for the worse. FishbowlDC reported that on May 24 Mr. Williams pled guilty to second degree assault of his ex-wife, author Amy Alexander, and his on probation until November 24. She told Fishbowl: "I can’t comment on a legal case but will say that I sincerely hope that Joe Williams finds his professional footing and that he also begins to take seriously his responsibilities as the father of our two children."

In part, the memo is an explanation of how Politico will try to make the transition from 2008 to 2009, a year when news Web sites are expecting a large drop in traffic. But the memo also functions as a self-congratulatory backslap for the Web site's big year.

"This election has also been, in more modest but important ways, defined by Politico," they write. But how does Politico retain its readership when there's less outside-the-beltway enthusiasm?

They write:

They sketch out a plan: Congressional, Lobbying, and White House reporters, whose work has generally been reserved for feature stories in the newspaper, will now get front-and-center treatment. Mike Allen will lead the staff for the White House.

And a lot of Politico reporters may have to rethink their own positions at the Web site since most of them have been covering one story up until now. They write, "As we turn the corner on this election, we'd ask people to think hard and with real specificity about their own signature strengths, about how to take full advantage of those, and about how they'll measure success in the months ahead. If any of you feel that you need more input from us as you answer these questions, we expect you to come see us."

Here is the entire memo:

Earlier in the week, NBC's Lee Cowan said "it's almost hard to remain objective" when you're covering Obama. Harris responded: "In any event, what Lee Cowan said, is it's hard. OK, it's hard. Do it. Detach yourself. Nobody cares about our opinions."

Bill biographer John Harris, in the Washington Post, writes that "the recent record makes it clear that Hillary Clinton has staked her future on precisely the same brand of centrist political strategy that her husband fashioned a decade ago -- using many of the same advisers and relying on familiar tactics.

"The strategy, confidants say, has three elements.

"On social issues, it is to reassure moderate and conservative voters with such positions as her support of the death penalty, and to find rhetorical formulations on abortion and other issues -- on which her position is more liberal -- that she is nonetheless in sympathy with traditional values. On national security, it is to ensure that she has no votes or wavering statements that would give the GOP an opening to argue that she is not in favor of a full victory in Iraq. In her political positioning generally, it is to find occasions to prominently work across party lines -- to argue that she stands for pragmatism over the partisanship that many centrist voters especially dislike about Washington."

Also in the piece, nice anecdotal stuff, a good point about the personal loyalty she's inspired, and details on her role in the early debacles of the Clinton White House.

(via Political Wire)

Presidents move in the polls long after they leave office, and armchair historians can hold endless conversations about who belongs with the great, the near great and the mass of lesser mortals. Harry Truman departed the White House with abysmal ratings, but 50 years later, thanks to a series of engaging books about his colorful personality, he ranks as one of the most popular Presidents of the 20th century, revered by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Where Bill Clinton fits into the ebb and flow of history is not yet known. The very word "history" is still a bit awkward with this extraordinarily mobile man, moving across the globe at warp speed on behalf of AIDS and tsunami victims and still moving, despite 13 years of unprecedented exposure, in the hearts of the American people.

John Harris' important new book is without doubt a sign that history, with all its plodding seriousness, is catching up to the go-go 90's. That's good news. For too long, since Mr. Clinton began his improbable run, this supersized American story has been distorted by extremist views, particularly from the right, which continues to wipe out forests in its zeal to publish as much defamatory material on the Clintons as it can find or fabricate.

Neither side will be entirely happy with The Survivor, which is probably just right. At the end of the day, this is a smart reflection on those mercurial years from one of Washington's best reporters (importantly, one who came of age under Mr. Clinton). It's scrupulously researched; it's well-written; and, to a surprising degree, it's calm-not an adjective we usually find in Clintonland.

I was there for many of the events Mr. Harris witnessed, perceiving them through the parallel but quite distinct lens of a speechwriter. It's incredible how distant it all feels at times-another century, and another country as well: We were such a different nation when Mr. Clinton came to Washington that we almost need a passport to get back to it. But every now and then, I'll discover a piece of confetti in a suit pocket and realize that parade in Accra or Sofia or Tegucigalpa really happened.

Not quite a biography, The Survivor is a comprehensive inside portrait of the Clinton Presidency. As we might expect from a Washington Post reporter, there's a lot of politics here, the endless give and take with friends and enemies to push through legislation-not so different from your average West Wing episode. There's also a narrative arc, familiar to readers of 19th-century novels, of a talented protagonist who enters a dangerous city, is beset by problems of his own making and snares laid by others, survives a near-fatal crisis and emerges a changed person. There's quite a lot on the Lewinsky crisis, which Mr. Harris experienced up close. There are also insightful reflections on the Presidency, the eight years and the man himself.

It was a long eight years, as Mr. Clinton's admirers and detractors can both safely agree. (There are 76 million pages of documents in Little Rock to prove it.) It was also an important time of transition, one that we haven't fully come to grips with yet. Mr. Harris does a good job reminding us of the feel as well as the facts of those years. And he persuasively asserts that the entire tenor of the decade-to-be changed when Mr. Clinton forced a reluctant Congress (including zero Republicans) to adopt his program of fiscal discipline in 1993, leading to the prosperity that will always provide a sparkly backdrop to the Clinton story.

That's one of several compliments Mr. Harris pays to Mr. Clinton. The book is carefully calibrated and avoids emotional extremes, but the grudging respect of its title becomes clearer by the book's end. Mr. Harris reminds us of the unpopularity of the courageous decision to bail out the Mexican peso, and steps back now and then with some astonishment to comment on how much good policy was enacted. He also admires Mr. Clinton's foreign policy, generally ignored by the commentariat, and this marks a genuine step forward for The Survivor. There were obvious early missteps in Somalia and Haiti, and a disastrous failure to intervene in Rwanda, but Mr. Harris detects growing confidence from Bosnia onward, as well as a clear international vision for America's importance on the world stage.

Because he knows the eight years so well, Mr. Harris avoids a pitfall that has tripped up previous writers-namely, to interpret the entire administration through the prism of 1993, when pizza boxes were piled around the White House and rancorous discussions divided staffers who looked too young for their jobs. Mr. Harris discerns roughly five major phases-the frenzy of 1993, the overreach and disaster of 1994, the recovery of 1995-97, the crisis of 1998 and the re-recovery of 1999-2000. He notes correctly that Mr. Clinton is the only President in recent memory-and perhaps the only one save Lincoln and F.D.R.-to enjoy as much popularity at the end of his term as at the beginning.

Given the vastness of Mr. Clinton's Presidency, it's perhaps unfair to expect Mr. Harris to cover it all. Still, I had the feeling that some areas were inflated, presumably because of Mr. Harris' access (i.e., the Dick Morris saga), while others were unjustly neglected. Some major moments and ideas receive scant attention: the Arafat-Rabin handshake of 1993, the speech to an African-American church in Memphis, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Family and Medical Leave Act, AmeriCorps, Mr. Clinton's friendship with Ron Brown, to list only a few.

In my own not unbiased opinion, more attention could have been paid to the tangible ways that American lives were made better during those eight years, in ways ranging from education to crime prevention, job creation and conservation. It wasn't always the sexiest news, but it was happening every day. And after going into all of the scandals that dogged the Clinton team (as he should have), Mr. Harris could have been clearer about stating that no one was ever convicted of any felony relating to official wrongdoing-in stark contrast to the Reagan/Bush years. Hardly anyone noticed, but a few weeks ago, Henry Hyde expressed doubt about the impeachment trip that he and Tom DeLay took America on.

Surprisingly, Mr. Harris neglects some big-ticket items like the Good Friday Agreement, which changed Northern Ireland forever. Or North Korea, where Mr. Clinton and his team negotiated a complex agreement that wasn't perfect, but was indisputably better than our current broken diplomacy (at last count, North Korea may have up to six nukes that didn't exist in the 1990's, with more on the way). A bit more on Mr. Clinton's unusual standing with world leaders, and his almost superhuman capacity to goad enemies into making peace with each other (usually by keeping them awake with him, past the point of normal human endurance), would have made this a fuller book. It would also have provided a public service by reminding Americans that there once was a time when Presidents did this sort of thing: The Bush administration's next peace conference will be its first.

Mr. Harris is simply wrong about terrorism. He's usually the master of his material, and confident whether addressing Mr. Clinton's strengths or weaknesses. But here he seems unsure of himself, and unpersuasive when he argues that it was ultimately Mr. Clinton's fault that few heeded his very vocal warnings about Osama bin Laden and other terrorists. It was his fault for warning us? As I recall, the press corps was oblivious, and the Republican Congress simply opposed anything Mr. Clinton proposed. Then, after George W. Bush became President, when the G.O.P. had a chance to do something about terrorism, they slashed counterterrorism funding, ignored intelligence concerning Al Qaeda and chased after chimeras like a national missile-defense system.

I wish Mr. Harris had looked at another area of accomplishment. In 1992, the year of the Rodney King riots, the United States was a racially polarized nation. In 2000, that was no longer the case, and we don't have to look far for the reason: There wasn't a week in his Presidency that Bill Clinton didn't address in some way the unfinished legacy of the civil-rights movement. Black Americans understood from the start that a President was speaking to them with a level of intelligence and sustained commitment that they had never heard before, and are not likely to hear again until we elect an African-American President. I vividly remember a small ceremony that President Clinton held to restore the honorable discharge of a black soldier who had been unjustly cashiered a century ago. There was no media coverage, no political gain-he did it simply because it felt right.

That leads to a larger point, which is that Mr. Harris' clinical detachment-necessary for a print journalist-can lead him to ignore the mystical bond that united Mr. Clinton with the American people, and which still drives his powerful appeal. Does anyone doubt that he would defeat his successor if the 22nd Amendment were repealed? Mr. Harris excels at the inside hardball of politics-the chin music. But he doesn't always convey the other kind of music, the theatrics and laughter and empathy that Mr. Clinton did so well. In the last century, only F.D.R., Kennedy and Reagan can touch him for charisma. The Irish always understood this about him, and somewhere in my desk I have a crumpled piece of paper that Seamus Heaney gave me during a Clinton visit to Dublin, quoting an ancient bit of Irish poetry. "The music of what happens," wrote Finn McCool, "that is the most beautiful music of them all." Bill Clinton could hear those celestial harmonies; most of us cannot.

A great anecdote in The Survivor has Mr. Clinton telling Robert Rubin, the Secretary of the Treasury, to "get out and talk to real people." Mr. Rubin responded, "Am I a real person?"-to which Mr. Clinton answered, "No." Despite his heroic command of his subject, Mr. Harris retains a little Beltway unreality-aware of the unhealthy cynicism of the White House press briefing room, but not entirely able to free himself from it. He knows that Mr. Clinton was "a marvelously entertaining president," "always loading his plate a little higher at life's buffet." But he can't quite allow himself to surrender his suspicion. Oddly, very little of Mr. Clinton's own version of history, copiously available in My Life, makes it into The Survivor.

Obviously, no one can write a detailed political history and a potboiler at the same time. And it's unfair to ask Mr. Harris to relinquish the skepticism that reporters carry around like a notepad. But the very excellence of Mr. Harris' effort creates nostalgia for a book that doesn't yet exist-one that will tell Bill Clinton's story with less sound and fury, and more Faulkner. One thinks a little of All the King's Men, recently filmed in New Orleans, and one longs for a latter-day Robert Penn Warren, or Edwin O'Connor, or A.J. Liebling. Sin, perseverance, redemption-isn't that what America is all about?

Still, that wistful note shouldn't detract from Mr. Harris' achievement. He has set the bar high for all who come after him, and written a big book that's worthy of his talents and his subject. To quote the final line of All the King's Men, he has taken us "out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time."

History may be an argument without end, as Mr. Harris reminds us. Bill Clinton certainly is. Americans will continue to debate the complex man who led them for eight years at the end of the 20th century, for the simple reason that he'll be an ex-President for much longer than he was President. He'll loom especially large as 2008 approaches and the full damage of President Bush's domestic and foreign policies becomes clear. We will still find reasons to hate him and to love him, according to our needs. But thanks to this book, there's now a sounder basis to the argument, and some hope that the argument might even turn into a conversation.

Ted Widmer directs the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College. From 1997 to 2000, he was director of speechwriting at the National Security Council.

corps would notice the right-wing conspiracy. After all, it has been operating

under their upturned noses for these many, many years. On May 6, my faith was

finally vindicated with the appearance of a startling article by one of The Washington Post 's most able

reporters, John Harris.

While Mr. Harris carefully avoids using the C-word, he

obviously gets it. By merely acknowledging the existence of what plainly

exists, he breaks new ground. Even more forthrightly, he points out that the

conspiracy's most important beneficiary, George W. Bush, has so far escaped the

barrage of assaults inflicted by the national media on everything and everyone

associated with Bill Clinton. If the Clintons (and Al Gore) were constantly

spattered with mud and worse, then Mr. Bush has been showered with champagne

and rose petals.

As Mr. Harris writes, "The truth is, this new president has

done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they

had occurred under Clinton. Take it from someone who made a living writing

about those uproars." He is quick to add that this difference in coverage has

nothing whatsoever to do with "journalists' attitudes toward Bush or their

willingness to report aggressively on him."

No, of course not. The true culprit is that right-wing thing

(which perhaps should be renamed La Cosa Destra, in homage to another infamous

group which some have likewise insisted is mythical). Mr. Harris calls it "a

corps" of "aggrieved and methodical people"

whose "well-coordinated" aim was to "expose and undermine" Mr. Clinton

from the moment he took office in 1993. He asserts that the absence of an

organized liberal mob is why Mr. Bush gets such an easy media ride every day.

Briefly sketching the gang's crews and capos, he notes that

there is no liberal equivalent of the Heritage Foundation-or, he might have

added, the American Enterprise Institute and about half a dozen smaller but

well-funded versions of same, financed by right-wing godfather Richard Mellon

Scaife.

Nor is there any leftish

loudmouth who possesses the influence of Rush Limbaugh-generously described by

the Post reporter as "colorful,"

although "malicious" and "mendacious" would have been equally apt. Perhaps most

important, there is no Democratic counterpart to Representative Dan Burton-the

Hoosier hooligan whose "investigations" of the Clinton White House were only

part of a broader harassment scheme mounted by the Republican Congressional

majority.

The irony of that

contrast between then and now doesn't escape the astute Mr. Harris. Despite

serious doubts about whether Mr. Bush won or stole the election, and his clear

defeat in the popular vote, he has been granted greater legitimacy by the

opposition party than his Democratic predecessor ever was. Mr. Harris observes

that "Washington's snarling public tone" during the 90's was produced largely

by Mr. Clinton's opponents, a fair judgment rarely offered in The Post or any other major newspaper

when it would have mattered.

Insofar as he discusses the right's hypnotic influence on

the press, Mr. Harris' article is semi-confessional, or at least

quasi-confessional. When mainstream journalists write about the shortcomings of

their industry, reassurance always outweighs remorse, and Mr. Harris is no

exception. Yet his perspective as an insider at a Clinton-bashing national

daily ought to be taken seriously.

According to him, there are never any conscious decisions by

reporters or editors to slant news coverage in deference to conservative

dictates. Instead, he explains that "we give more coverage to stories when

someone is shouting." The Republican right ranted incessantly, about Whitewater

and Travelgate and Filegate and Chinagate, and the Washington press haplessly

lent credence to their ravings.

The busy journalistic establishment somehow neglected to

discover, and thus inform their readers, that much of the scandal mongering was

without foundation. Mr. Harris doesn't dwell on that failure, or the ambitions

and enmities behind it.

As they grew addicted to the Clinton soap opera, he writes,

"the Washington press corps collectively may have fallen a bit out of shape at

the hard work of examining, exposing, and critiquing public officials as they

go about making the decisions that affect national life." So the flabby,

scandal-addled minds of those who covered the last administration are in no

condition to cope with this one.

Still, he strives to conclude with the upbeat tone required

inside the Beltway these days: "Good for this White House in avoiding the worst

stumbles of the early Clinton administration; good for Washington in giving a

new president a break at the start. And those people eager to see this

president face scrutiny can rest assured: The opposition is sure to awaken."

Should that reawakening ever occur, we will see whether Mr.

Harris and his colleagues can hear shouting from the left as well as they heard

it from the right. Based on recent experience, I worry that they've become deaf

on that side.