Rating: 
Summary: Clinton Vindicated
Review: This work is enclopedic. It presents the Clinton era in one volume from the perspective of one who was there and whose head was in the cross hairs. It gets a bit tedious in spots but it is fairly easy to wade through those spots and get on with the gripping story. I am glad that I paid little attention to what was going on at the time it was going on. This work gives me a sufficient review of the whole story. I am glad I read it and I recommend it without reservation. Subsequent books will go on to vindicate President Clinton even more. I liked the man and would have voted for him for a third or fourth term if that could have been done. As to my feelings about the villians of the piece, I draw a veil or a pall over them and their kind.
Rating: 
Summary: Factual look at how a few people can destroy a nation...
Review: Sidney Blumenthal writes a memoir about the Clinton years as the professional writer he actually is. This is a refreshing change from the trite and banal patter that usually comes from political hacks. The book is a joy to read from a literary perspective but is difficult to read if you have any desire to see right over might. This book is at it's best describing the insiders view of the insanity that was the "Clinton Wars". Yes, there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy". Yes, rich lunatics funded it. It is at it's most weak when it is describing foreign policy and the "third way" that Clinton so much wanted to begin with leaders around the world. Ultimately, however, it is a book that cries out for a time when politics was about ideas and ideals and not about the politics of personal destruction. The GOP is bereft of ideas and is only about hate: They hate Clinton and they hate progressive ideas. All they can rely on is personal attacks. They actually spent $70 million using Ken Star as their pit bull, to no avail. This sums it all up for me: Blumenthal talks about the last days at the White House, " our cheering rose in crescendos to affirm the work that we had
all contributed and that was at an end. We could only celebrate the past because the future was lost."
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written
Review: The first insider's book on how the Clinton administration dealt with the first Republican coup attempt on a Democratic White House. I have nothing but praise for Mr. Blumenthal for telling this story. I hope many more books on these events are to come.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read, better than my original expectation
Review: When Blumenthal's book was first released, my first reaction was a groan. I had liked his writing in The New Republic and elsewhere before the Clinton presidency. OTOH, I was not a great fan of his New Yorker pieces---his partisanship undermined his credibility, although his writing was certainly more literate and thoughtful than much of what was produced by the hard core anti-Clinton partisans. Nonetheless, I saw some excerpts and was pleasantly surprised at the writing and the depth. It's a first person account of an interesting period from someone who obviously was close to the Clintons, but also had longstanding knowledge of "the other side" and even maintained friendships with Clinton opponents. I thought the 1st chapter dragged and the sequence of the book was a bit out of joint (hence, 4 stars instead of 5). I also tend to disagree with assessment of the Tina Brown period at The New Yorker---she initially trashed the place and its standards and only later showed that she could assemble a magazine worthy of the name. Blumenthal's autobiographical sketch should have come sooner as it sets the stage for both the Clinton White House and Blumenthal's overall political perspective. The book is an engrossing read and Blumenthal's previous research about the political Right, as well as his time with the Clinton's brings fresh ways of looking at the Clinton administration that are missing from other accounts. The book will not be enjoyed by serious anti-Clintonistas, but I doubt that any of them would buy the book. Indeed, some of the reviews by Clinton critics here certainly suggest that the reviewers never even skimmed it. OTOH, it is a book with some appeal to people, like me, who were not strong Clinton enthusiasts, but who also felt that the Clintons were badly served by the media.
Rating:
Summary: A Truthful Look Inside
Review: With increasingly concentrated media ownership, the right wing now controls the megaphone. Hate radio and cable news have effectively manipulated public opinion over the past 15 years. The good news is that it seems that people are now finding their voices and with the writing of some brave authors armed with the truth, public opinion is beginning to shift.
Sidney Blumenthal's beautifully written account of his experiences dealing with the deep pocketed attempts of the right to bring down our last legally elected president is both chilling and enlighting.
With the publishing of David Brock's Blinded By The Right, and others like Michael Moore, Joe Conason, Eric Alterman, Hillary Clinton and Al Franken's soon to be released book, a much clear picture is beginning to emerge of the nefarious plans of the power elite and the lies they tell to fool those not paying attention.
Well done Sidney!
Rating:
Summary: "...and the truth shall set you free."
Review: So far I am only 150 pages into this book. I've not previously put anything on amazon about a book until I have finished it. I am going to make an exception in this case, because I am extremely familiar with the material that Blumenthal has so far covered in his fine, fine history of the Clinton "scandals" and how they came to be. I have scanned and read several of the scurrilous literary efforts of the professional haters who relentlessly attacked and tried to destroy the Clinton presidency and in the process have poisoned, perhaps fatally, our political processes and the political and social climate of our nation. The Clinton Wars is highly informed, meticulously factual, remarkably readable, partisan but not blindly so, and one of the most if not the most important books about the current state of the Republican Party to hit the bookshelves in years. In the first chapter, Blumenthal does the best job of anyone so far at outlining the character of Bill and Hillary and their enemies. The implacable, sometimes venel and always selfserving enemies, as opposed to the political opponents of the Clintons, and the supposedly "objective" journalists who were their all too willing tools, are revealed in all their slimy glory. The journalists were led with eyes wide open, but clouded by visions of Watergate-like notoriety, down a torturous and easily disproved primrose path by some of the most outlandish and unbelievable characters since the King and the Duke were huckstering the rubes in Mark Twain's Huckelberry Finn. The idea that this cast of characters - led by the ever despicable old racist Justice Jim Johnson (Orval Faubus's evil genius), convicted felon and small time crook David Hale, poor crazy and frightened Jim McDougal, the reprehensible Floyd Brown and David Bosie and all the rest of the unlikely cabal that almost brought down a president - was able to pull the wool over the eyes of almost all the mainstream press and influence so much of the political manuevering of the last 8 years of the twentieth century will be as ludicrus to historians as it currently is to so many of those of us who knew many of the characters pulling the strings behind this drama. If the rest of Blumenthal's work holds up to the very auspicious start of the first 150 pages, he, along with Joe Conason and Gene Lyons (The Hunting Of The President), and David Maraniss (First in His Class), has performed a major service to historians writing about politics the late 21st century in the United States. wfh
Rating:
Summary: for those whose minds are not already made up ...
Review: What happened to America in the 1990's is that a small band of people composed of: 1 die-hard segregationist, some zealous Christian vote organizers, 1 wealthy conspirator, and a number of unscrupulous operators of all kinds attempted to blacken the reputations of Bill and Hillary Clinton. With the help of an out-of-control and inept Special Prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, they were able to bring a set of charges into Congress that they called an impeachment case. But the "case" was a worse embarrassment to the lawyers who concocted it than to the Clintons. So flimsy was this set of charges that it took the President's lawyers less than 24 hours to destroy the "case" it took 5 years and $70M to build. The impeachment could never have been brought if the country's "mainstream" press had not faithfully printed everything the conspiracy wanted them to print for all six years after the Times broke the Whitewater "story." The complicity of the press in spreading the endless lies of the conspirators was much more dangerous than the conspiracy itself, because it means that for the moment, America has no national news purveyor it can trust to be more interested in the truth than its own convenience and parochial prejudices. It was a conspiracy, and it was one the American media have not discovered to this day. But Mr. Blumenthal is not half as interested in skewering the conspirators as he is in reporting a real live presidency in all its hard work, focus, intelligence, ingenuity, and barely controlled chaos. It is a pleasure to be able to recommend Mr. Blumenthal's book highly on several grounds: first, it's a first draft of the history of the era, and a damned good one; second, Mr. Blumenthal writes clear and sometimes eloquent prose; and third, the book gives an irreplaceable account of what it was like to be working at the White House, assisting President Clinton effectively, and to be rewarded by having your public reputation blackened by the same kind of malodorous lies that Bill and Hillary Clinton were suffering. Among other virtues, the author's wry and gentle humor demonstrates one of the qualities it took to survive the ordeal the author's public service turned into. You meet a human being in this book, a smart, hard working, ethical one, who understood going into his White House job what was in store for him. The first lie about him arrived in the Drudge report the night before he reported to work. Welcome to the Clinton White House, Sid Blumenthal. The book is a model of concise reporting on events the author was part of. Everything is footnoted, and the personalities of people Blumenthal knew are sketched insightfully and even-handedly. Blumenthal's politics are progressive, and he, like Bill Clinton, has a vision of what political power exercised on behalf of all the people of this country and all the people in the rest of the world, can accomplish. He reports on what was accomplished in the midst of the hideous static of unending journalistic attacks. Among many other matters, he reports on how seriously President Clinton took terrorism in general and Osama bin Laden in particular, and he reports on the amount of anti-terrorism legislation Clinton sent to a Republican congress (where much of it died) and on the successes the administration enjoyed in preventing bin Laden's army from blowing up more things than they did. He clearly respects and admires both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and he says why. After overexposure to the endless psychobabble and rumor mongering that press coverage of the Clinton presidency became, Blumenthal's account of what the President wanted to do and how much of it he accomplished is wonderfully refreshing. He reports both the successes and the failures with political acuity. I paid this book the supreme compliment of carrying all 2+ pounds of it back and forth to work so that I could read it on the bus. (Normally I don't carry books over 7 ounces for commuter reading.) I found it as gripping as a novel, despite the fact that it tells a story whose basic plot I already knew. It is a much better story he has to tell than the cartoon drawn for us by the mainstream media. For those whose minds are not already made up, it is an indispensable book.
Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: This book changed the way I looked at all of the distractions raised during Bill's presidency. Of course, now that we have hindsight it is easy to see how frothed and crazed the Clinton attackers were, and how all of the politics were just overblown exploitations in the name of pride. This book gives great details and meat into the situation and keeps one entertained untill the end.
Rating:
Summary: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY
Review: Sydney Blumenthal has pulled the covers off the complicity of the press with Kenneth Starr. He has also brought to light the hypocisy of the Washington elite like the self righteous Sally Quinn and David Broder who felt that the Clintons were not a part of their social set because they were from Arkansas and because they did not bow down to them or kiss their rings. This was the start of the Clintons' problem. 'They were not a part of us'.
The Whitewater pseudo scandal was the perfect place to begin. Half truths, innuendos and just plain bad reporting was the order of the day. It's amazing how the press swallowed the spin of Ken Starr and his goons.When I read of how Sam Dash was so disgusted with the actions of the OIC I was thrilled to see that at least there was one person who was not following 'The Pied Piper.'
Blumenthal is a good writer and best of all he named names. The press has lost all credibility and right now they are running around like toothless dogs not daring to critisize this administration for fear of being black listed. What a shame.
Rating:
Summary: A primer on the tactics of the right
Review: For 10 long years, the right tried to ignore the will of the people and overthrow a presidency. And with the cooperation of the media, the people hardly noticed. Many books have been written about the sleazy tactics of the right, but none paint the picture quite like Blumenthal's latest. Even at 800 pages, it doesn't have the space to explain it all. (You'll need to read Conason and Lyon's book, "The Hunting of the President" to get all the gory details). But Blumenthal presents an insider's perspective of what history will eventually record as a thoroughly disgraceful (and in some cases criminal) manipulation of government by the republican political party. Don't expect good reviews (or even perhaps many reviews at all) of this book by the media. Blumenthal exposes many of the members of the media for what they are -- either craven conservatives with a political agenda, merely masquerading as journalists; or craven opportunists, easily manipulated by the right and eager to peddle their sleaze, regardless of the actual facts. This book is required reading for those who want the truth.
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