Reading Suits a Relaxed Clinton to a Tee

President Clinton reads by night; he reads in the late afternoon. And on a sinfully relaxed rainy day, the sort he encountered over the weekend here, he will occasionally read in the light of a dreary midday.

What’s on his reading list this summer vacation? An eclectic mix of mysteries and other fiction, political history and biography. It belies the president’s crack Monday night when he said vacationers on Martha’s Vineyard “don’t want to think about anything except maybe walking on the beach . . . or fighting our limitations out on [the] golf course.”

And there’s one book that has currently grabbed his attention: “Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk,” by Peter L. Bernstein. Published in 1996, it is a history of humankind’s efforts to understand risk and probability--particularly appropriate, Clinton has said, “in my job.”

The history of the postwar presidency is one of generally unrelenting intensity. And yet, of course, chief executives never quite leave the job behind.

So, there is this, too, on the president’s reading pile: “Waves of Rancor: Tuning in the Radical Right,” by Robert L. Hilliard and Michael C. Keith. It is described in Amazon.com’s summary as a survey of the use of the communications media by the political right-wing.

White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart, disclosing the president’s selections, read from a review by author Studs Terkel: “The extreme right-wing has attempted to disguise itself in the form of the radio talk show host. But its virulent rhetoric has exposed it for what it really is, a hatemongering faction.”

To which Lockhart added, “I get it next.”

Many of the books the president has with him are gifts. And the list of books he plans to read includes one by a friend: the novel “Just Revenge,” a dramatization of the question of whether a Holocaust survivor is entitled to revenge 50 years after World War II.

It was written by Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who has been a frequent defender of the president, particularly during the months of impeachment, and who attended a $1,000-a-person fund-raising party here for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s likely run for the U.S. Senate from New York.

Some of the other books that Lockhart said Clinton plans to read are: “A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century,” by Witold Rybczynski; “Cold Hit,” by Linda A. Fairstein; “Crossing to Safety,” by Wallace Earle Stegner; “Dark Lady,” by Richard North Patterson; “The Last Patrician: Bobby Kennedy and the End of American Aristocracy,” by Michael Knox Beran, and “Memoirs of Hadrian,” by Marguerite Yourcenar.

Often, the president will make his way through more than one book at a time, or drop one that loses his interest.

“I’m not sure whether they’ll all get done, but he’s always looking for more,” Lockhart said.

Eventually, of course, work will intrude. Written briefings arrive each morning from the National Security Council staff on overnight developments. Each afternoon, Chief of Staff John Podesta, or someone in his office, relays a report on what the White House staff has accomplished in the president’s absence--in effect, an account that could be titled “What I did During Your Summer Vacation.”

And, said Lockhart, as the Clintons move to New York at the end of this week to spend the remainder of their two-week vacation in East Hampton and the Upstate Finger Lake region, the president “will probably spend more time focusing on getting ready for returning to Washington.” That means briefing papers on the budget and national security studies.

Clinton’s vacation last year was by far the most scrutinized private period of his tenure, with every public move--and they were extremely limited--put under a microscope for what each might reveal about the state of his marriage in the immediate days after he acknowledged his relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky, the former White House intern.

That was indeed a vacation for reading.

Not once was there a scene such as that played out Sunday at a fund-raiser for the first lady. The event drew roughly 250 people and grossed about $250,000. And there was Clinton, picking up a saxophone and joining a high school jazz band to serenade a couple celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary with a rendition of “My Funny Valentine.”

“He was in his groove,” said one participant in the party.

Not once did he set foot on a golf course during the 1998 vacation. He rarely ventured beyond the confines of the compound on Oyster Pond, where he has stayed during each of his five visits to the island during his presidency. It is owned by Richard Friedman, a Boston real estate developer.

Already on this vacation, however, he has played two rounds of golf--prompting some grumbling at the Nantucket course he visited Friday--and there is no sign that the pace will slacken. When he is not playing golf or reading, he is often socializing at dinner with friends--on Sunday night his hosts were Jill and Ken Iscol, whose son, Zach, is a friend of the president’s daughter, Chelsea.

On Monday night, he took up an invitation from his Washington friend, golfing partner and advisor, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., to take part in a fund-raising party for the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. It placed him on the edges of a local controversy over the operation of the hospital.

The president’s golfing partners on Monday, a delightful day of cloudless skies, were Sen. Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat; Matt Gohd, a New York investment banker; and Thomas H. Lee, a Boston investor.

Accepting a mulligan--a shot he gets to do over and not count against his score--as he stepped to the first tee, Clinton called out: “Oh, I killed it. I came over.” His second shot was no better, veering once more off the course. “Aahh, I did it again! I’m aiming over there!” the president cried out.