Former President Bill Clinton is known for presiding over the greatest peacetime economic expansion in the history of the United States.

He is perhaps best known, however, for personal recklessness.

The list of Clinton indiscretions - incidents flying in the face of the compassion and brilliance he so often brought to the nation’s highest office - was not a short one.

And it continues to this day, seven-plus years after he left office.

In July’s Vanity Fair, writer Todd Pardum authored a feature article on Bill Clinton - brilliantly titled “The Comeback Id” - as stunning as it is long.

Not surprisingly, Pardum’s nearly 10,000-word piece enraged the Clintons when it was posted online. They sharply criticized it in a statement.

Even the most supportive, loyal Democrats were saying it in the early 1990s and we’re saying it again here in 2008: what the heck is Bill Clinton thinking?

Even as his wife, Hillary Clinton, steadfastly seeks the White House, the Big Dog has apparently been up to his old tricks in the past few years.

The Vanity Fair article unleashes a laundry list of recent Bill Clinton antics - and his questionable relationships with women are at the forefront.

There is no proof of post-presidential sexual indiscretions on Clinton’s part, despite a steady stream of tabloid speculation and Internet gossip.

But among a not-so-small cadre of Clinton friends and former aides, concern about the company the boss keeps is persistent, palpable, and pained.

For instance, there is this excerpt:

“Over the last few years, aides have winced at repeated tabloid reports about Clinton’s episodic friendship and occasional dinners out with Belinda Stronach, a twice-divorced billionaire auto-parts heiress and member of the Canadian Parliament 20 years his junior, or at more recent high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip that Clinton has been seen visiting with the actress Gina Gershon in California. There has been talk of a female friend in Chappaqua, a woman in a bar at a meeting of the Aspen Institute, and a public sighting of Clinton … and a ravishing entourage in a New York elevator that, a former Clinton aide told me, led a business leader who saw them to say: I don’t know what the guy was doing, but it was so clear that it was just no good.”

The look inside Bill Clinton’s indiscretions and questionable conduct goes on for eight lengthy pages, discussing, among other things:

• His circle of “fast” friends and relations
• How he has not been the same since his 2004 heart surgery, and harbors a greater resentment of his perceived enemies than usual
• The controversial role he has played in Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency, including (but not limited to) his alienation of voters in South Carolina following his comments about Barack Obama, Hillary’s chief rival (follow this link for some recent and patently absurd Bill Clinton quotes on the 2008 Democratic presidential race)
• How when Clinton left the White House, he made a list of world problems he cared most about and might yet help solve - yet blended these altruistic efforts with private business interests of some of his biggest donors in ways that are surpassingly sloppy, if not unseemly
• That for all his good qualities, Bill’s acts of extraordinary selfishness in the name of idealism - and refusal to take grown-up responsibility for the consequences of his own actions - remain defining characteristics

Follow this link to read the full Vanity Fair article here.