by Rita Mcconnell

Created on: March 02, 2010

Ah, the Clinton years. Compared with all that has plagued the Bush and the Obama Administrations, it’s easy to wax nostalgic about a time when most of us were living prosperously on the tech bubble, and the height of domestic politics was determining the definition of “is.”

Nowhere are the bizarre American concerns of the 1990s so pronounced than in Primary Colors, a book that cannot really be called fiction or non-fiction, which was so scandalous when it emerged that the author (whom we now know to be a Newsweek correspondent embedded with the Clinton Administration) called himself Anonymous.

It’s a fascinating and fun read, really, completely documentary or not. It paints the picture many of us envisioned of the Clintons in the 90s: a brilliant, happy-go-lucky, overly libidinous, good-ole boy with a politically ambitious, unamused wife tripping through the public mind with a team of master spinmesiters ready to clean up any possible mess they could get themselves into. And it carried with it a horror no American wanted to face, but we all wanted to discuss: was this really what went on in Washington the hallowed halls of our forefathers?

Primary Colors gave America a new level of permission to dissect and judge the personal lives of its leaders – an attitude that carried over into the Lewinsky Scandal, Clinton impeachment, and next two presidential elections. Not to mention the trails of many politicians to follow. Gary Condit, anyone?  So many of us read Primary Colors and took it for truth that it could be why we as a nation were so angry with Hillary Clinton for not divorcing Bill – it went against Anonymous’s portrait of her that we all knew to be “real.”

Yet while we were all sifting through the pages, determining what was fact and what wasn’t, Anonymous was making bigger and more important points about American politics than we were comprehending. Those are the real legacy of the book today.

Those came mostly through the voice of the character believe to be based on George Stephanopolous. Through his eyes, Anonymous explored the often inhuman demands we place on our leaders, expecting them to be pillars of virtue as they save the world from all of its ills. Through the same character, we are invited to wonder if the traditional expectations Americans have of their presidents, fed by spin doctors who for decades have protected the masses from the sad truth that presidents are as human,

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