Yes, that's right. The dependable left-wing spin machine, the New York Times, actually gave Mr. Clinton's memoir a devastating critique. According to reviewer Michiko Kakutani, the tome "is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history."

Kakutani describes My Life as "a hodgepodge of jottings: part policy primer, part 12-step confessional, part stump speech and part presidential archive, all, it seems, hurriedly written and even more hurriedly edited." Though Mr. Clinton acknowledges some responsibility for the affair with Monica Lewinsky, "he spends far more space excoriating his nemesis, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, and the press." Ditto for the terrorist threat; he stated it was growing on his watch but expresses no regret over his sporadic and failed attempts to address it.

The reviewer nails the ex-president for his obvious attempt to campaign for his wife:

"Part of the problem, of course, is that Mr. Clinton is concerned, here, with cementing — or establishing — his legacy, while at the same time boosting (or at least not undermining) the political career of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. He does a persuasive job of explicating his more successful initiatives like welfare reform and deficit reduction, but the failure of his health care initiative, overseen by Mrs. Clinton, is quickly glossed over, as is the subsequent focus of his administration on such small-bore initiatives as school uniforms and teenage smoking."

The final conclusion is that the Clinton memoir is merely a relic more fitting for the Vietnam era:

"Lies about sex and real estate, partisan rancor over "character issues" (not over weapons of mass destruction or pre-emptive war), psychobabble mea culpas, and tabloid wrangles over stained dresses all seem like pressing matters from another galaxy, far, far away."

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