Rating: 
Summary: The Definitive History of the Clinton Years
Review: This book not only sets out the truth about Bill Clinton's time in office, it makes monkeys out of several "respected journalists" by exposing the lies and half-truths they willingly promoted on behalf of Clinton's GOP enemies.For one example: James Stewart wrote an entire book, Blood Sport, which revolved around his claim that Hillary Clinton was a crook because she failed to sign a certain one-page document. However, as Conason and Lyons report, the document in question was a two-page document, and, had Stewart bothered to turn it over, he would have found Hillary's signature as plain as day. For another: Conason and Lyons show exactly how, and why, the mainstream media rushed to do the Republican Party's bidding. The slimiest, most-thinly-sourced stories were fair game, so long as they were anti-Clinton. Contrast this with the gentle treatment the US media have given George W. Bush since Day One. Highly, highly recommended. You cannot understand what has happened to America without first reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Old Tricks
Review: Conason is up to his old tricks as a big time Clinton defender. They have been working this act for years. Since good old Arkansas days. Don't fall for it!
Rating:
Summary: Eye Opening
Review: Conason & Lyons provide a well documented description of the tactics that were used to discredit President Clinton. Now, I'm of the opinion that Clinton went a long way to opening himself up to these attacks, however the fact remains that the attacks were vicious, well funded, well coordinated, and effective. At the end of the day, these attacks on the president were successful, if we can define ruining the public image of a sitting president as success. In the end America suffered as a result of this, and we owe it to ourselves to understand what really happened. This book is a good starting point, but you will need to read it with an open mind, since it will likely contradict much of what you have seen in the media.
Rating: 
Summary: Informed, Rational and Insightful
Review: Gene Lyons and Joe Conason have written a very interesting book that more Americans should read. They present the facts, they look at Clinton the man and Clinton the President (which, contrary to many Republicans opinions, can be separated). They explain who was behind the Republican witch hunt, and why. This was an interesting read, and gave me a deeper insight into the Whitewater "scandal" and who all the players were. We find out that Ken Starr was far from an "independent" counsel in the Clinton impeachment efforts. Perhaps Hillary's comments about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" weren't all that off-target after all. This is an important read for anyone that wants to know how dubious the efforts were to taint the name of a great man, and a great President, William Jefferson Clinton.
Rating:
Summary: Lies, lies, lies...
Review: A simple effort spouting the typical Liberal rhetoric throughout. My bet is the Clintons, themselves, sponsored the writing of this book (of course, that will never be known if it is true). The whole premise of the book is amusing: "Campaign to destroy Bill..." Bill destroyed himself with his behaviors in a government position (and other positions)...the highest postion in the land. He made a mockery of the Commander in Chief title and behaved as a high school freshman who just can't control his hormones, and doesn't really care about the coursework (duties, responsibilities) he is expected to complete while in school (office). Personal interests come first. In short, the authors of this book need to learn that the Clintons needed no help in destroying their name, they did it quite nicely on their own. The high marks given to this book are simply those who side with the authors' points established before the first word of the book was written. Certainly, you can convince yourselves all you want...if it makes you feel better.
Rating: 
Summary: Yeah, ok
Review: The authors made a case for the determination of some people and organizations to bring down the Clintons, while seemingly not devoting much time to the culpability of the Clintons themselves to shoot themselves in their collective foot. There was plenty of blame to go around, but this book did source and explain some of the forces at work to undermine the Clinton tenure. Did this go way beyond bad losers, forgeting that we need to work togther as a people or was it, after all, simply politics, as usual ?
Rating:
Summary: The Truth!!!
Review: If you want to really know what happened read this. Don't be blinded by the media anymore, or by conservative analysts. Bill Clinton may have done some things that were not moral, but he wasn't really all that bad. Please, everybody read this, and realize that the US is full of political parties that spend all their time bashing eachother instead of doing something meaningful and bashing the peoples that really need a beating.
Rating:
Summary: This book is scary
Review: This book starts out detailing the antics of a group of Arkansas Clinton-haters and how they intended to get even with Clinton for having defeated them politically. That loosely organized gang showed unlimited creativity in their attempts to create scandals, where none actually existed. Their lies were then picked up and spread by well placed national figures that hid behind their employers presumed credibility. (William Safire and Michael Isakoff to name a couple).
Our formerly honorable news organizations, in search of a scandal, would greedily lap up the lies funneled towards them by the Arkansas gang. Those news organizations would then turn around and lend legitimacy to those lies by simply repeating them in print.
Soon the Arkansas gang was joined by a national counterpart of extremely well funded, well connected, right-wing operatives who all seemed to have full time jobs working to discredit Bill Clinton and other Democrats.
The lies were told and retold by writers at the Wall Street Journal, Rev. Moonie's Washington Times, and The American Spectator. Formerly legitimate news sources, such as the NY Times and The Washington Post found themselves falling for all the subterfuge. Their good names fell so far from grace that one can only believe that their writers were moles planted by the right-wingers.
Other "conservative" publications and deep-pocketed donors helped to spread the lies. Richard Mellon Scaife played his usual major role in this scandal.
The scariest part of this book wasn't the ability of this right-wing cabal to create news and scandal and have it carried in the mainstream press. The scariest part was actually how Ken Starr and the Federalist Society were able to turn our judicial system upside down, and cheapen it to the point that Ken wanted to examine the President's penis to look for "distinguising characteristics". If that soiled dress hadn't turned up, he surely would have pushed for the examination.
Their Alice in Wonderland justice system was actually able to compel testimony from a reluctant Monica Lewinsky and the President of the United States regarding their sex lives. All of this originated with the "Independent Council" investigation of a fabricated crime regarding a failed land investment the Clinton's made in Arkansas nearly 20 years prior.
I consider this book to be a must read for all Democrats and undecided voters. Even the most battle-hardened Democrats will be shocked by the magnitude of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and the depths to which they would stoop. Undecided voters will get a horrifying view into the workings of that machinery, and how it touches so many of the major players in today's media and the Republican party.
Conservatives, on the other hand, will smile with glee at how effective they were at "pulling this one off".
Rating:
Summary: Real politik
Review: "The Republicans have a problem...How can conservatives expect to win votes for an economic program so inimical to the middle class? The answer is they cannot--and they know it. Therefore most conservative ideologues have done their best to change the subject from the economy to what they like to call 'the culture'...Both race-baiting and the [sexual] politics of family values are part of the same Republican culture war strategy of diverting the anger of the white working class from the owners and operators of the Republican party--the corporate and hereditary rich--and focusing wrath on unpopular minorites..." "Supply-side economics, the myth of public school failure, and the illegitimacy-epidemic hoax are on the the tip of the iceberg. Other examples of the dissemination of half-truths and falsehoods by the foundation subsidized conservative intelligentsia...are not difficult to find... ...The consevative disinformation apparatus went to work again, to prevent President Clinton's plan to provide health care coverage for all Americans from ever coming to a vote. Clinton's plan would have been the most conservative, pro-business version of universal health insurance in any western democracy. Nevertheless conservatives were desperate to stop it, in order to deny the Democrats a political victory. The cynical reasonsing of Republican strategists was spelled out by Irving Kristol's son William: 'It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests...'" Michael Lind
UP FROM CONSERVATISM
From Chapter Seven: Three Conservative Hoaxes and Chapter Six: Whistling Dixie
"From the beginning, his enemies portrayed Clinton as unworthy to occupy the office of President of the United States. This assessment held firm despite his acknowledged intellect, industriousness, and charm, and also despite the fact that by almost every statistical measure, the American people and their government were in far better condition by 1999 than when the Arkansan took office in 1993..." THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT
From the Preface
THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT is based on what actually happened during the years of the Clinton ascendancy, from his governorship of Arkansas to becoming "First in his Class", one of the most popular American presidents of the 20th century. It is also, by default, a psychological anatomy lesson on the banal ugliness of human nature as it has been exemplified and exposed via both Clinton's enemies and those who sought to profit from his distress and stress-induced foibles. Politically, this book proves without question that an American Jihad by one party waged on another has taken precedence in American politics for virtually all of the late 20th century, over and above any concerns for the American public. Psychologically, it is practically a confirmation of the effect of child abuse on the body politic and the human soul. The themes (among others) of envy, opportunism, the obsession with power and the power of deep-seated lonliness reverberate through the hidden stories of everyone of Clinton's enemies, from the "bimbo eruptions" of women paid to lie about affairs with Clinton in Little Rock, to the majorest of major players in Washington and every stop in between--including religious cults in Korea. Most importantly however, THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT is based in its majority on the legal documents and court proceedings that formed the basis of the cases against Clinton--much of which was never consistently reported in the major newspapers or CNN (for which the only logical reasons, though pretty frightening, are given by the award-winning journalist authors). For this alone, and by this alone, the book is an incredible experience. "Clinton's lawyers walked Gennifer Flowers through a detailed accounting of every dollar she had banked as a result of going public about her alleged twelve-year affair with the president. The total came to more than $500,000. As in her two books, however, Flowers was unable in hours of cross-examination to specify a single time and place where she and Clinton had ever been alone together. After claiming to have shacked up with him in several Little Rock hotels, for example, she was unable to name one." From Chapter Sixteen, "The Bastard Should be Exposed" This book is profoundly important for an understanding of modern American history and the soul of American society. It is also so masterfully written by Conason and Lyons that, despite how dry and rhetorically partisan it could have come off, it is fair, meticulous and reads like a novel. Truth, once again, is stranger than fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Journalism at its finest; corrective history at its best
Review: "While [Freudian psychologist Melanie] Klein's theory essentially deals with [the emotional dynamics of] the first year of life, I feel she also explains much of our loveless and destructive world. In greed for ever more power, lovers and leaders alike destroy what once fed them...How much easier to say the other is wrong, is the persecutor; to shore up these defenses with even shriller accusations and faultfinding..." Nancy Friday
JEALOUSY "When people give up the truth as they see it for the sake of an ideology, however, they then, regardless of the reasons that made them do it, defend the ideology from attack by the next generation with every means at their disposal. If they did not, they would be forced to face the tragic dimensions of their own loss." Alice Miller
FOR YOUR OWN GOOD: SOCIETY'S BETRAYAL OF THE CHILD "After Watergate, I never expected another impeachment investigation of a president in my lifetime, let alone an actual impeachment and a Senate trial. Nixon's successors, I thought, would recognize the price of scandal and learn the two fundamental lessons of Watergate. First...release the facts...as early and completely as possible. Second, do not allow outside inquiries...to harden into a permanent state of suspicion and warfare.... As successors to George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt, [American Presidents] expect to rule. But after Vietnam and Watergate, the modern presidency has been limited and diminished...the [post-Watergate] presidents, in frustration, have been in rebellion." Bob Woodward
SHADOW: FIVE PRESIDENTS AND THE LEGACY OF WATERGATE
Epilogue "Had Linda Tripp known Lucianne Goldberg a little better, she might have known that the literary agent was taping their conversation.... Politically she was a hard-bitten conservative of Nixonian vintage, with the same inclination to fight dirty that had always identified the late disgraced President and his circle... "[Editor of The American Spectator] Bob Tyrell's satire relied heavily, as always, on the metaphor of Watergate.... Unoriginal, certainly, but no doubt satisfying to the Washington conservatives who had yearned so long to avenge Nixon." Joe Conason and Gene Lyons
THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT
From Chapter Fifteen: "Impeachment for Fun and Profit" In this, the second year of what undoubtedly would have been the Gore presidency in a "kinder, gentler" America, we are left never knowing many things. My generation will probably never know what Universal Health Care looks like in the United States of America. (Much the same way the pre-FDR generation or the pre-LBJ generation could only speculate what good Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Civil Rights legislation would do for the country.) We will probably never know how much, if at all, the Clintons are actually in love with each other, and love each other still. We may never know in our lifetimes if partisan political wars between the two parties will ever be less important to our political and financial leaders than the state of our nation at any given time. (This book proves without question that an American Jihad by one party waged on another has taken precedence in American politics for virtually all of the late 20th century.) But thanks to Joe Conason and Gene Lyons and this book, THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT, we do know a few important things: 1) The Whitewater Investigation was a hoax 2) The institution of the Media in our time is the fourth branch of government in America; not liberally biased as some would attest but drunk with power and almost hopelessly corrupt to its core 3) President William Jefferson Clinton was a flawed alpha male, but, nonetheless, a genius; and 4) The moral compass of the American Intuition, which smelled all of the goings-on as documented in this book, reelected him in a landslide and raised his popularity in the polls to unprecedented levels *during the impeachment process,* can still be trusted. "From the beginning, his enemies portrayed Clinton as unworthy to occupy the office of President of the United States. This assessment held firm despite his acknowledged intellect, industriousness, and charm, and also despite the fact that by almost every statistical measure, the American people and their government were in far better condition by 1999 than when the Arkansan took office in 1993." From the Preface This book is based on what actually happened during the years of the Clinton ascendancy, from his governorship of Arkansas to becoming "First in his Class"; one of the most popular presidents of the American 20th century. THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT is based in large part on the legal documents that formed the basis of the cases against Clinton. For this alone, and by this alone, the book is an incredible experience. "Clinton's lawyers walked Gennifer Flowers through a detailed accounting of every dollar she had banked as a result of going public about her alleged twelve-year affair with the president. The total came to more than $500,000. As in her two books, however, Flowers was unable in hours of cross-examination to specify a single time and place where she and Clinton had ever been alone together. After claiming to have shacked up with him in several Little Rock hotels, for example, she was unable to name one." From Chapter Sixteen, "The Bastard Should be Exposed" At no time does this book become an apology for the truth of Monica Lewinsky or Clinton's sexual issues--which were no different than those of LBJ, or FDR, or Kennedy, or Horace Harding...or Lee Atwater...or (dare I say it Ms. Hemmings?) Thomas Jefferson for that matter. With the truth exposed of the absence of integrity on all sides of the political and legal fence, and the many crimes he was accused of--from the Whitewater land deal to actual murder--being exposed as out and out slanderous politically motivated lies, it doesn't have to be. This book is profoundly important to American history and a powerful study of American society. It is also masterfully written and reads like a novel.
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