Bill Clinton on inauguration day 1997. Photograph courtesy of Flickr user pingnews.com.

Whatever your feelings about former President Bill Clinton­—reverence, doubt, curiosity, rage—your point of view will likely be satisfied by the four-hour documentary, Clinton, that will air over two nights on PBS stations beginning Monday, February 20. For a Washington audience, it plays more like a home movie, with all-too-familiar characters resurfacing.

The documentary is produced by Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance as part of the PBS series “American Experience,” which is creating a collection of presidential biographies. Clinton is a juicy subject, and that’s part of the beauty of this film; it’s a history lesson and a captivating cautionary tale all in one. The biography is split into two parts. The first two hours, “The Comeback Kid,” revisit his unstoppable imperative as the first baby boomer president. The second two are called “The Survivor.” The opening scenes are focused on what you might expect: Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who became a household name for having oral sex with Clinton in the Oval Office—prompting endless jokes and the second impeachment vote in US history.

For those who remember the arc of the Clinton years, many familiar faces appear onscreen to testify about the man—though not the man himself. There are close friends and advisers: David Gergen, Wesley Clark, Mike McCurry, Dick Morris, Sidney Blumenthal, Harold Ickes, James Carville, Dee Dee Myers, Leon Panetta, Mark Penn, Joe Purvis, Robert Reich, Robert Rubin, John Podesta, Harry Thomason, and Betsy Wright. One wonders, though, where is good friend and first White House chief of staff Mack McLarty?

Meanwhile, a boatload of journalists have their say, including Christiane Amanpour, Jonathan Alter, Max Brantley, John Harris, David Maraniss, and Jeffrey Toobin.

Newt Gingrich’s presidential bid could deliver the Oval Office its first PhD in a century. Gingrich got a doctorate at Tulane; his dissertation was on Belgian education policy in the Congo. A PhD is rare in the White House—only Woodrow Wilson had one. While the three most recent Presidents boast graduate degrees, post-college education is uncommon. Here’s a guide.

The Oval Office, shown here in May 2011, may have to close next year for renovations. Official White House photograph by Pete Souza.

Update: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked about our report Wednesday and referred all comment to the GSA. From the transcript:

Q: Can you -- there are reports out about some renovations having to do with the Oval Office.  And can you explain what is true, what is not true?  Is the Oval Office going to have to be vacated for some time?  Does the President, whoever he may be, have to be relocated to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building?

MR. CARNEY:  Jake, I have a very broad portfolio, but renovations to the campus here are not part of it.  So we refer those questions to the GSA, which handles the renovations and all the work that’s done on the property here.  So I don’t have anything specific for you.  I would just refer you to the GSA.

Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney are already knee-deep in what many observers are saying could be the nastiest presidential bid in decades—but a year from now, the ultimate victor, no matter who he is, may not get to claim the ultimate prize: the Oval Office.

According to sources familiar with the discussions, beginning sometime next year the President may be relocated from the White House West Wing and the iconic Oval Office to temporary office space next door in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, formerly known as the Old Executive Office Building.

Former White House pastry chef Roland Mesnier after his talk at the Katzen Center for the Arts. Photograph by Carol Joynt.

Former White House pastry chef Roland Mesnier has fond memories of the Clinton era but says his initial reaction to Bill Clinton was that he was “scary.” It had nothing to do with Clinton’s policies or politics—just his appetite. Famously, before open-heart surgery and becoming a vegan, Clinton was known for his gourmand habits.

“He had a big appetite, scary,” says Mesnier. “He could eat five or six pork chops.” He says the White House kitchen staff “had to be ready.”

Clinton arrived in 1993 with not just his appetite but also some food allergies, including chocolate and flour. “But he loved dessert,” says Mesnier. “It made it very difficult for a pastry chef.” He recalls the episode of a strawberry cake he made one evening. Clinton devoured half of it all by himself, and the next morning he wanted more. “No one could find the cake,” says Mesnier, who had a face-to-face with the distraught commander in chief. “Clinton was pounding on the table and shouting, ‘I want my goddamned cake.’”

The chef, who is given to flights of humor, says that when the cake could not be found, “We decided [Vice President Al] Gore must have eaten it.”

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Before a team of elite Navy forces stormed Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, they and senior US officials had closely studied a digital mock-up of the facility and even a physical miniature, able to be laid out on a table. It showed them the intelligence community’s best guess about what Bin Laden’s hiding place looked like, down to the precise location of gates, fences, windows, and doors.

The digital 3-D model became the next best thing to being there as the Obama administration engaged in a flurry of high-level planning that led to the death of the world’s most wanted man. The model was built over the past several months by analysts at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a little-covered organization headquartered in Bethesda, Md., that serves as the eyes of America’s intelligence network. It was NGA that first located bin Laden’s hideout about 30 miles north of the Pakistani capital city, Islamabad, according to two senior officials at the agency, both of whom had been working on the hunt for bin Laden since before the 9/11 attacks.

What a difference two years, a couple hundred drone strikes, and killing Osama bin Laden make. With the news that a CIA-led operation ended the life of the world’s most wanted man, the long-embattled agency may have politically rehabilitated itself after years of controversy that once seemed likely to sink it.

Just a few years ago, the CIA was pilloried for not informing Congress that it had once considered setting up a clandestine team to hunt down and kill terrorist leaders. Last night, CIA Director Leon Panetta personally directed a joint intelligence-and-military strike that did just that. Two helicopters full of Navy special-operations forces and intelligence operatives stormed bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and, according to various accounts, killed anywhere from four to 22 people. This time, no one on the Hill is complaining.

Osama bin Laden in 2001. (Getty Images)

In the end, Osama bin Laden met his demise in the way many experts who anticipated this moment had imagined: US intelligence identified a member of his inner circle—in this case, an unwitting courier—who led them straight to the terrorist master’s doorstep.

The successful strike is the most potent example to date of the US military-and-intelligence community’s global capability to track, identify, and ultimately to capture or kill one man. Details are few at this point, parceled out by senior administration officials early this morning. But it appears that US intelligence officials and analysts worked tirelessly for years to locate bin Laden’s secret hiding place without any willing assistance from the small coterie of trusted men and women around him. No one turned on bin Laden. There was no need to.

The case cracked slowly. Four years ago, according to administration officials, detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, told their captors the nickname of bin Laden’s courier, an aide so trusted that he lived with the man whose messages he conveyed on foot. Intelligence officials long ago determined that bin Laden had ceased communicating via electronic means in order to avoid detection by the United States’ global network of computerized eavesdropping. Indeed, the fortified compound where he was found had neither Internet nor phone access. Experts had believed the best way into bin Laden’s inner sanctum would be to follow the few people, maybe even the one person, who connected bin Laden to the outside world.