Clinton’s book gives too little

More than a decade ago, when Bill Clinton was struggling to preserve his presidency against an ascendant and aggressive conservative movement, he famously conceded that the “era of big government is over.” The implications of that phrase were vast, especially for Clinton, who had entered politics as an idealistic young man to confront and ameliorate social problems. If government action is not the solution to society’s ills, then the only alternative must be the private sector. That is the same approach preferred by conservatives dating to Andrew Carnegie, who believed that the libraries he built and the charities he endowed could outweigh his depredations against the industrial working class and that private giving not only demonstrated religious virtue but also staved off higher taxes and stricter regulations.

But is private charity or the “nongovernmental sector,” as it is known in wonk-speak, sufficient to the needs of the modern world? What can volunteers and visionaries realistically hope to accomplish, what must governments do and how can they most effectively work together to address poverty, climate change, health care, ethnic and religious conflict, along with the rest of humanity’s long list of troubles?

Few current thinkers are able to address those urgent questions with as much experience and authority as Clinton, the acknowledged master of policy and politics. After a creative career in government that spanned three decades at the state, federal and international levels -- followed by a second life as a highly successful foundation chief and convener of the Clinton Global Initiative, now the world’s largest gathering of nongovernmental organization executives and funders -- his perspective on these matters is broad and deep.

Yet in his new book, “Giving,” Clinton doesn’t quite come to grips with the hard questions. He prefers cheerleading to analysis, lavishing indiscriminate praise on everyone from the plucky little girl who picks up litter on the beach to the friendly billionaires who finance scholarships and microcredit loans in poor countries. Although the book is nominally divided into chapters highlighting different kinds of giving, the dozens of philanthropic stories that Clinton recounts in these pages swiftly blend into a fuzzy, feel-good blur. Most conclude with the same homily: If only everybody gave their money or time, we’d be living in a different world.

Unfortunately they don’t, or at least most of us don’t most of the time. With this book and with the assistance of such celebrity friends as Bono and Oprah, Clinton plainly hopes to motivate a wave of volunteer activism and charitable tithing. Setting forth a wide variety of organizations and activities that address every conceivable issue, from hairpieces for children with cancer to peace in the Mideast, he seeks to convince readers that there is a niche for them and that their happiness and fulfillment will depend more on what they give than what they take. Time after time, he quotes a serene donor -- often a retired hedge-fund manager -- who explains how good it feels to give away his money now that he and his family possess far more than they could ever spend.

Middle-class people who struggle with the exploding costs of mortgages, health insurance and college tuition may wonder how such stories are relevant to their lives. Yet it is true, as Clinton explains, that Americans at all income levels have proved capable of giving generously and volunteering avidly -- and that Internet technology has amplified those altruistic impulses. He learned how powerful the effect of the World Wide Web could be when he set out to raise money for Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina victims and donations quickly overwhelmed the immediate capacity to use them.

What Clinton elides here, however, are the most salient lessons of Katrina, especially for a nation now realizing how badly we have been governed by antigovernment ideologues. There is no substitute for competent government, which might have prevented the disaster and certainly could have mitigated its aftermath. Private charity cannot adequately compensate devastated families and businesses or rebuild ruined communities without massive government action. We know this because while charities and individuals have stepped forth valiantly, the federal government has so far failed to fulfill its promises.

Clinton devotes a chapter to the idea that “government matters,” but this mostly hinges on municipal government policies to cut energy use and go green. In a year when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is running for president, perhaps he feels obliged to leave questions of federal policy to her and her campaign. (But he doesn’t fail to highlight his wife’s history of giving, including her work for the Children’s Defense Fund, before she was a political celebrity.)

Still, his reluctance to examine the vexing question of public and private responsibilities (and capabilities) is disappointing because he can elucidate these issues so well when he chooses to do so. One of the best chapters in “Giving” describes his own foundation’s remarkable achievement in providing HIV/AIDS medication and equipment to impoverished communities in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. At a time when governments and charities had abandoned infected populations abroad to an early death, Clinton took on that challenge at the behest of Nelson Mandela. Using a brilliant strategy of financial leverage and negotiation, Clinton’s team brought down the cost of HIV/AIDS drugs to a manageable level and established a pilot program.

With major commitments of funding from foreign governments and Clinton’s diplomatic skills, that program is being scaled up to save millions of people. It would not have happened without the creative NGO intervention, and it could not have happened without government action at many levels.

Despite lapses into sentimentality and analytical gaps, “Giving” is on to something important. If Clinton is right, we are leaving behind an era of moral stagnation, political viciousness and grasping narcissism for a renewal of idealism, altruism, bipartisanship and global consciousness. He offers valuable guidance to everyone who, like him, is seeking that newer world.

Joe Conason, a columnist for the New York Observer and Salon.com, is the author, most recently, of “It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush.”