Bill's Block

By Jay Branegan/Washington

When Hillary Clinton sat down to write her first book, it became an instant best seller. Her audiotape narration even won a Grammy. And of course the title, It Takes a Village, entered the vernacular. The President wasn't quite so fortunate. When he wrote his first book in office, Between Hope and History, it went straight to the remainder bins.

Now it turns out the President's second effort at matching his wife's success is faring even worse than the first one. His latest literary adventure is nearly a year past its original due date, and has been buffeted by bureaucratic wrangling within the White House. A 400-page, ghostwritten draft of the text, which focuses on race in America, sits stuck in his In box. The topic is one that Clinton cares deeply about and is supremely qualified to examine. Tentatively titled Out of Many, One, the book aims to offer the President's personal vision of future racial and economic justice, and a kind of work plan on how to get there. "The good news is, he really cares enough about it to want to own it," says one of the ghostwriters, Harvard professor Christopher Edley Jr. But that, he adds, is also "the bad news."

The book has had to compete for attention with the biggest upheavals of Clinton's presidency. The report from his advisory board on race, which forms the basis of his book, came out a week after the Starr report last year. And the book has been delayed by dissent among aides. The President wanted lots of specific policy proposals, which sparked a dispute among staff members over whether the book should therefore be vetted by the full array of official policy committees; the President ruled no. Aides complained that some proposals went too far, such as one for a program to end racial differences in childhood educational achievement that reached far beyond current budget plans. There wasn't even agreement on whether to emphasize the remaining problems or focus on the progress. "The President," says Edley, "will have to decide whether the glass is half empty or half full." That's if he ever gets back to it.

--By Jay Branegan/Washington