Yakety fact: Bill Clinton still talking their ears off

By Peter Carlson
The Washington Post

Bill Clinton

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If you're planning a dinner party, take this bit of sage advice: Don't invite Bill Clinton.

Big Bill is so desperate for attention these days that he might show up, and then you'd have a hard time getting rid of him as he jabbered on into the wee hours while your other guests stifle yawns and sneak peeks at their watches.

"Those who socialize with Clinton say there's no off switch, even when he's relaxed," Robert Sam Anson writes in an amazing article on Clinton's post-presidential years in the June issue of Vanity Fair. Anson backs up that point with a series of devastating anonymous quotes from Clinton cronies:

"He just talks. You don't really have a conversation with him."

"He is just self-absorbed. Totally."

"He's always the last to leave."

"He can't stand to be alone."

Anson is a veteran journalist and author who chronicled the ex-presidency of Richard Nixon in the 1984 book "Exile." Now, watching Clinton, he concludes that the ex-prez suffers from "spotlight starvation" — a compulsion characterized by "a hankering for attention that makes him a joke even to admirers."

After leaving office in 2001, Anson says, Clinton was so bored sitting in Chappaqua, N.Y., while his wife worked in the Senate that he showed up at a local elementary school one morning to watch a school play. Another time, he invited a couple of local 12-year-olds into his living room to chat about the impact of technology on everyday life.
 
"He was," Anson theorizes, "desperate for company."

These days, Clinton is tanned and trim, his famous paunch whittled away by the South Beach Diet and a tenacious German trainer. But his charisma is still intact and when he strolls down the street, Anson reports, people yell, "I wish you were still president."

Other folks are even friendlier. Last year, Clinton dined in a Palm Beach restaurant with Bill McBride, the Democratic candidate for governor of Florida. "They were greeted by a table of several young women," Anson writes, "one of whom — to the hysterical amusement of neighboring diners — volunteered to perform Monica's specialty on the spot."

That was a nice ego-boost for Clinton, but it didn't do much for McBride, who lost to Jeb Bush in a landslide. In fact, Anson reports, the candidates Clinton supports tend to lose. He worked tirelessly behind the scenes helping to line up money and support for Wesley Clark, all to no avail. Now, Republicans will be happy to learn, he's advising John Kerry in weekly phone calls.

Clinton is full of energy, but much of it is squandered, Anson writes. He can't sit still, flitting from place to place around the globe to make speeches and hobnob with celebrities. He thinks nothing of flying to Qatar and back in 24 hours. Paid $12 million to write his memoir, he dawdles, says Anson, wasting time on dubious projects like his lame "debates" with Bob Dole on "60 Minutes."

"He's about the smartest guy I ever knew in my life," says Don Hewitt, the veteran "60 Minutes" producer who hired and fired Clinton, but "he is torn in a million directions."