The area where Clinton hopes to be the equal of Ulysses S. Grant: Writing a worthy memoir. But Grant only wrote a good memoir because he "devoted the vast majority of the book to his triumphant Civil War military leadership and wrote virtually nothing about his often disastrous presidency." So the chance that Clinton's memoir will turn out to be a good read is slim. The chances are quite high, on the other hand, that his book will get lots of attention for quite a while. It's been one book after another this Presidential politics season. One week it's Clarke, then the next week we only want to talk about Woodward. Woodward's book seems to have more staying power than Clarke's (which wiped an even lesser book off the stage). But when the big Clinton book arrives there should be quite an uproar. I suppose everyone is already getting ready to use the choice nuggets to prove whether Bush or Kerry should be elected. Or maybe, now that we know the book is coming out in late June, both Kerry and Bush can plan to do or say things that they'd like to see fail to attract attention.

UPDATE: But they can't plan too much, because Clinton has a well-known tendency to be late. It's a way of sucking even more oxygen out of the room ... sucking the oxygen out of several adjoining rooms.