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Steven M. Gillon, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xviii + 342. $24.95.
Steven Gillon tells a great story. The Pact, his study of the political relationship between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, is a page turner (however unlikely that seems). But it is also much more. The study springs from the intense but little-known efforts made by Clinton and Gingrich toward a major overhaul of Social Security. The book opens with a brief account of a secret meeting at the White House in October 1997, proceeds to explain how such a meeting was unlikely but became possible, and concludes with the forces that ultimately rendered those efforts moot. The book's major contribution is not its new information, but rather how Gillon frames and understands the story he so skillfully tells. Woven throughout are several themes that provide Gillon's sense of what the 1990s, and 1960s, tell us about the past forty years in America.
One theme focuses on the many similarities between these two men. For example, both men come from homes of modest means with hard, distant father figures. Both at times have been accused of being more interested in themselves and their hold on (or reach for) power than in the needs of their constituents. Of course, both men are masters of political and policy detail, but both are also dreamers of grand visions of the future and willing to think in innovative ways. Both men possess a pragmatic streak that allows them ideological flexibility if the payoff is sufficient. Without pressing the similarities too far, and acknowledging...