Clinton's book

There are subtle propaganda artifices for enhancement of the image of a political leader on the playing fields of history, past, present and future, the human angle, poverty. Middle class, taxes and an assortment of rights' have been duly emphasized, with a great deal of political analysis, for future judgement by critics and observers. The script would have been different without the controlling influences of the editorial experts.

Some write their stories, and many dictate these days. The difference jars, and the effects vary on the type of readers. Great leaders like Churchill and Nehru hand-wrote the first drafts. Putting it down on paper organizes the thinking process, and the output undergoes an auto-editing process--there is a method in the obsession.

Any way, the life of a world leader is worth reading, benefiting the gleaner of the rich harvest from biographies and autobiographies. Nothing like first-hand comments.

Bill Clinton projected himself as a human being, the leadership part is secondary (evolves automatically, as a seedling grows into a tree)). But he took time to emphasize how a person becomes a politician, and how to apply the skills learnt,.

In these 957 pages, there are many tips and lessons for the politicians living in different parts of the world, who impose their patriotic spirit on the people (electorate, if democracy prevails.)Reading the book in 2004 in Dhaka, many aspects of US foreign policies are projected sharply in focus, explaining some of the actions, interaction, fall-outs, and consequences which bug the international scene, dominated by a lone super-power, grappling with the use, non-use, and misuse of power and influence. According to current press reports, Prime Minister Blair in London was thinking seriously of resigning after the Iraq fiasco.

Politics may not be a dirty game, but the operational environment is shadier than transparent, more questionable than clear, and more complex to the majority of the voters than the politicians project during the election campaigns. They seek the ever-elusive benefit of the doubt, living in a different world.

More notes in the making from daily reading of this fat book. Too much political details and names, not essential for the foreign readers. Like the abridged version of Toynbee's Study of History, someone has to abridge this volume, as a fast-food package. Of course it would be translated into Bangla. Who are in this game in Dhaka?