GREENBERG, Paul 1937-

PERSONAL: Born January 21, 1937, in Shreveport, LA; son of Ben and Sara (Ackerman) Greenberg; married Carolyn Levy, December 6, 1964; children: Daniel, Ruth Elizabeth. Education: University of Missouri, B.A., 1958, M.A., 1959; Columbia University, graduate study, 1960-62. Politics: Republican. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—2406 West 39th St., Pine Bluff, AR 71601. Office—300 Beech St., Pine Bluff, AR71601.

CAREER: Journalist and author. Hunter College of the City University of New York, lecturer in American history, 1962; Pine Bluff Commercial, Pine Bluff, AR, editorial page editor, 1967—; Chicago Daily News, Chicago, IL, editorial writer, 1966-67. Commentator on National Public Radio. Military service: U.S. Army; became captain.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grenville Clark award for best editorial, 1964; National Newspaper Association award, 1968; Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, 1969.

WRITINGS:

Resonant Lives: Fifty Figures of Consequence, Ethics and Public Policy Center (Washington, DC), 1991.

Entirely Personal, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MI), 1992.

Resonant Lives: Sixty Figures of Consequence, Ethics and Public Policy Center (Washington, DC), 1993.

No Surprises: Two Decades of Clinton-Watching, Brassey's (Washington, DC), 1996.

Columnist, 1970—.

SIDELIGHTS: Paul Greenberg is, in his own words, an "ideologically unreliable conservative." The Louisiana native, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer, was described a different way by Dennis Banks of Social Studies. Banks referred to Greenberg as a member of "that rare breed, the true Southern intellectual." To that end, Banks continued, Greenberg produces writing that is "compelling and demanding, with an ever-present edge of wit that finds both the heroism and hypocrisy in each of his subjects."

Among those subjects is Bill Clinton. The forty-second U.S. president was just finishing his first term in office when No Surprises: Two Decades of Clinton-Watching was published. The first of the postwar "baby boom" generation to become chief executive, Clinton was a product of the countercultural 1960s; Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton both "are inescapably Sixties figures," as columnist Richard Reeves was quoted by Ramesh Ponnuru in a National Review piece: "Their history, their body language, their visceral response to social issues carries the imprint of sex, drugs, rock and roll, Vietnam protest, and feminism." Greenberg's book examines Clinton in terms of his character during his days as both Arkansas governor and U.S. president. In the author's view, Clinton earned the nickname "Slick Willie" during those early years: "Bill Clinton would have made a great editor," Greenberg wrote. "He never tires of changing words about." In his National Review article, Ponnuru pointed to Clinton's Gulf War record as support for Greenberg's claim. At the war's outset, then-Governor Clinton declared himself a supporter of antiwar factions; but after the U.S. emerged victorious, "he referred to himself as an early war supporter." When Greenberg, editor of Arkansas's Pine Bluff Commercial, challenged Clinton on this matter, the president, wrote Greenberg, "fixed me with his sincere look and explained that, no, he had sided with the majority."

Greenberg summed up Clinton in No Surprises in terms of a nonendorsement. It is "not the duplicitousness in his politics that concerns so much as the polished ease, the almost habitual, casual, articulate way he bobs and weaves," commented the author. "He has mastered the art of equivocation." To Ponnuru, such a summation "is typical of Greenberg, both in its sturdy elegance and in its concern for character." The reviewer added that in the book Greenberg highlights his favorable impressions of Clinton as well, citing the former president's efforts on behalf of "Haiti, NAFTA, [and] education." Karl Helicher of Library Journal maintained that the author of No Surprises is at his "most eloquent" in examining the "'clintonized culture' of the 1990s—a society defined by ambition without purpose."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Greenberg, Paul, No Surprises: Two Decades of Clinton-Watching, Brassey's (Washington, DC), 1996.

periodicals

Booklist, July, 1991, Mary Banas, review of Resonant Lives: Fifty Figures of Consequence, p. 2027.

Book Report, September-October, 1992, Brenda Little, review of Resonant Lives, p. 57.

Library Journal, July, 1991, Nancy Ives, review of Resonant Lives, p. 106; July, 1996, Karl Helicher, review of No Surprises: Two Decades of Clinton-Watching, p. 138.

National Review, July 29, 1996, Ramesh Ponnuru, review of No Surprises, p. 46.

Publishers Weekly, June 21, 1991, review of Resonant Lives, p. 48.

Social Studies, March-April, 1992, Dennis Banks, review of Resonant Lives, p. 85.*