Clinton, the couch potato.

In this year's most anticipated book - well, there hasn't been any Harry Potter scheduled for 2004 - America's 42nd president Bill Clinton, reveals unsatisfyingly little revelations that make for a good read.

Certainly, there have been much to look forward to in the autobiography. Beyond the sex scandals, he had led an extraordinary life. As The Economist puts it,

Mr Clinton comes from the sort of world that John Kerry has only witnessed in films: a world of casual violence, unstable relationships and shady characters. His father died in a car crash before he was born. His stepfather was an abusive alcoholic who once shot a gun in the general direction of his wife and stepson.

How did he manage to climb out of such a chaotic background?

Unfortunately, as the chapters of his early life drew to a close, so did the insights “My Life” offered.

But the point of this entry isn’t about the book. What caught my attention was how most reviews including Michiko Kakutani's from The New York Times, make reference to Mr. Clinton’s celebrated 1993 speech in Memphis to the Church of God in Christ. More effusive praise cannot be found: riveting, visionary, soaring eloquence.

Douglas Jehl remarked then,

In Memphis today President Clinton broke out of the pattern of political speeches, of the expected and the calculated. He spoke from within himself, responding in emotional terms to the appalling reality of violence in this country today. The response he got shows that one thing Americans want a President to do is to speak out about wrongs, not always to have a 10-point plan or a graph--but to speak. No one person can solve our problems of social decay but this President has made us face them.

So I dug it up. Not a bad speech indeed. But this was at the same pulpit from which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous (and unfortunately final) public address, I've Been to the Mountaintop.

Great oratory can inspire. It's unfortunate we hear little of such these days.