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Summary: About Time
Review: I've been waiting years for a good, well-researched and scholarly history of the Clinton scandals. This is it. As an attorney, I recognize solid factual reporting when I see it, and this is the first time I've seen it about this issue. I handle matters such as Whitewater, and I've always been baffled as to why the Clintons were being accused of wrongdoing. Now I know. It is, literally, the first book that I've found that holds up to scrutiny. If the authors weren't honest and accurate in this book, Ms. Clinton couldn't possibly run for Senate in New York. I also found some errors in the notes, but I was looking for them by cross checking to stuff in my library--but nothing key.
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Summary: Surprised the Times didn't like it?
Review: My hat is off to the authors for an exhaustively documented book which was far from "tedious," as the New York Times reviewer said. Indeed, the Times could have used some of this tedium in their reckless approach to coverage of Whitewater and the other manufactured Clinton scandals. Neil Lewis, the Times reviewer, dismissed the book for failing to prove a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Well perhaps not, but it sure as hell was something.Lewis may also be right that the remaining fascinating historical question is why the Clintons evoked such extraordinary hatred among a few who would apparently go to any length to destroy them. For comparison, he evokes the hatred of FDR (and Eleanor) and Nixon. I would, however, suggest that a signicant difference may be that the effort to oust Clinton from office by any means, constitutional or not, began even before he took the oath of office. FDR and Nixon were given some time to earn their enemies by their actions in office. The other difference that is disturbing is the role of the mainstream press so well illuminated by Conason and Lyons. The high stakes careerism that has overtaken the nation's press since Watergate (or, more precisely "All the President's Men") seems to have removed a vital element of honesty and responsibility from the free press on which our Democracy depends. As digusted as one might be at Clinton's dalliance with the Beverly Hills princess from hell, it must be remembered that in previous administrations we would never have known about it. And rightly so.
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Summary: Fabulous
Review: This book uncovers the truth that the religious reich tried to supress. There was a vast right wing conspiracy out to undermine the Presidency and ultimately destroy America. In painstaking details, the authors trace the anti-Clinton sentiment back to Arkansas and racial prejudice. Because he supported the civil rights movement, the old south disliked Clinton and sought to destroy him. Now that our national nightmare is over and Starr and Tripp are exposed as the real threats to national security, this book serves as the most comprehensive chronicles of what happens if the GOP is allowed to control congress. For a party that allegedly supports fiscal conservatism, they sure had no problem wasting the taxpayers money on a groundless and partisan investigation. Although the reading can get complicated and depressing at times, it also reaffirms human potential. The mass demonstrations and rallies against impeachment and removal from office ultimately confirmed that the much-written about apathy of the American public can be shaken. We could have just let congress, Starr and Tripp trample over our wishes, but we fought back and will continue at the ballot box this November. It is my fondest hope that the experiences and emotions in this book will never be experienced by future generations.
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Summary: Factual Reporting, not Gossip
Review: The authors asked why reporters from Los Angeles, Chicago, New York city, and New Jersey went to Arkansas to look for corruption. Perhaps they couldn't find any in these places, at least none that could be printed by their publications. The book lacks pictures of any of the people mentioned; that's a drawback in case you might see them again. The book tells about the half-dozen reporters who were responsible for the many claims that are now known to be false; the small groups that generated the false claims; and the cabal of rich Clinton haters who paid for their lies. After his mother died of lung cancer (a life-long cigarette smoker) the Clinton Administration prosecuted Big Tobacco like no other President before him. Note that Faircloth and Helms, who picked Starr, were from North Carolina; a state heavily influenced (if not controlled) by Big Tobacco. The book should have been longer. It didn't tell about Monica's step-father: an advertising executive whose biggest client is Big Tobacco. Or why he got Monica an intern's job. Given her past history, was she used as an unwitting double agent to entrap Clinton? Also, her apartment in Washington was next to Bob Dole's. Can anyone believe that to be a mere coincidence? On page 384 (the notes for Chapter Seven) [p.108] they write "on the CIA's role in destabilizing the government of New York". Shouldn't that read "Great Britain"? Back in the early 1960s, when JFK experience a policy failure that was followed by increased ratings in the polls, he said "Its just like with Eisenhower, the bigger the foul-up, the higher the ratings". Clinton's growing support in 1998 showed that the people still rallied to a besieged President. I wonder if Macchiavelli addressed this phenomenon?
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Summary: An eye opener
Review: This book is excellent. It is quite an education on how deceptive and sneaky the media and politicians can be. It opened up my eyes. It is also very entertaining and even funny.
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Summary: All you need to know
Review: I'm no big fan of the Clintons, but this book, which is totally documented, leaves no doubt that Hillary Clinton was not exaggerating when she accused a "vast right-wing conspiracy" of attempting to destroy her husband and her. What is truly shocking, however, is how the press (and we're not talking Matt Drudge here, but the most prestigious newspapers and magazines) joined in to create the impression of Watergate-type scandals based on the flimsiest--or even no--evidence at all. this is an invaluable book.
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Summary: To validate the positives, assess the negatives
Review: Whenever I am leaning towards an opinion on a subject, I like to really check out the arguments of those who have reached a contrary opinion. In the case of THOTP, I wanted to know if Starr supporters and others who were hostile to Clinton could poke any holes in Conason's and Lyon's work. I went through the reviews here and found that all the negatives on the book were, predictably, attacks more on Clinton than on the book. The attacks on Clinton were generally rehashes of unproven allegations, many of which were addressed and smashed to smithereens in the book, others which were smashed in courts or in the Senate chamber. Accusations that the book was filled with half truths and lies were never backed up with examples. So the response is the same old tired unproven allegations, and attacks on the authors' credibility without specifics. Now I'm comfortable that Conason and Lyons told the real story and the whole story. I've already read a lot on the subject, but I found this book especiallt helpful in fleshing out all the details I hadn't fully understood, paricularly about Whitewater, The Arkansas Project, etc. which gives a lot of context to what happened later. Also, I did not know how egregious the misconduct and incompetence of the press was in covering the story. So far, I'm with Carville that this will be the key document on the subject in 100 years.
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Summary: The Republican coup d'etat gets the coup de grace
Review: With the intensity of experienced coroners, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons open up the corpse of the right wing cabal that pursued the Clintons for ten years. They use a microscope to investigate the ugly tumors that were growing in all parts of the rotting flesh. Then they pursue the causes of the disease, the virus that corrupted its putrid soul, and expose the remaining human carriers of the infection. And the living threats of the malaise these con artists still produce in our society. They smile at us daily from talk shows and newspaper headlines and blonde come-hither representatives of all that can be wrong with politics, the media, and misuse of investigational authority. How did they get away with it? How did they almost pull it off? Though the book is meticulously annotated and each an every action of the conspirators and dirty tricksters and money-grubbing leeches cannot be argued, there are many who would say with characteristic disdain, 'this is just a defense of Bill and Hillary Clinton.' To say that though, would mark one as irretrievably ignorant and unread. There is no defense of President Clinton's self-destructive actions in regards to his personal conduct in this book. Rather, it is a startling compendium of how his "angry gallery of defeated politicians, disappointed office seekers, right wing pamphleteers, wealthy eccentrics (i.e. Richard Mellon Sciafe et al), zany private detectives, religious fanatics and diehard segregationists" promoted the most unrelenting, spiteful campaign of destruction in the history of the Republic against a sitting president...a good man, and his family. I didn't want to read this book. I wanted to just let the corpse rot in the sun. But after I started it, I could not put it down. The one beauty of this whole 'living assassination attempt' is the fact that it failed miserably. And the American people had it right, early on. As the Office of Independent Counsel itself fell prey to the strategies and corruption within its own offices, this bloodless coup d'etat caved in on itself, the weight of its own abuses killing it off. If nothing more were to be written about this bloodthirsty dirty tricks campaign, carried out 'by a handful of Republican operatives and corporate lawyers and funded by a network of wealthy conservatives', we could rely on this meticulous book for a perfect chronology of these disgusting activities, and that decade of hate. Do not miss this book!
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Summary: What we never should have known
Review: I found this book to be exceedingly well-researched and rather matter-of-fact. It was without emotional diatribe and biased viewpoint. In my view we (the people of the nation of the United States of America) should never have known about President Clinton's foolish behavior with a young woman; it is not illegal or necessarily immoral for two consenting adults to play sex games. It may disturb you or me to hear of this and it may disappoint us and affect our judgment of the president, but there was no need for us to know about his. The only reason this stupid behavior came to light was that the "vast right-wing conspiracy" and its legal beagle, Mr. Starr found a way to get it in to the public view. Using a case that was thrown out of court, using illegal audio-taped evidence, and treating witnesses in a heavy-handed and demeaning way, Mr. Starr, with the backing of Mr. Scaife and the other right-wing zealots, and the old boy Arkansas Clinton-haters as well as the usual hypocrites in the congress who were "shocked", "shocked", released private, personal information in a lengthy and purposefully pornographic document to the press and to the people of this nation. The shame should be that of Starr and his crew and those who so gleefully disclosed and dissected a brief sexual indiscretion...that was none of their business, none of our business, and should never have come to light. There was no legitimate call for this horrendous invasion of privacy. (And, my son would say, "None dare call it treason".) William Jefferson Clinton won the presidency from the Republicans and George Herbert Walker Bush; the right wing has never forgiven him and it appears they will never stop trying to get even. I fear they will hound him and his family into the grave; they are without conscience.
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Summary: Scrupulous research and integrity
Review: THIS BOOK IS NOT A DEFENSE OF BILL CLINTON. It is a scrupulously researched, painfully objective analysis of the shameful, shameless behavior of the Office of the Independent Counsel and of the news media. The authors have provided named sources and other objective evidence for their every statement. It's a terrifying book, because it reveals just how much the OIC threatened the rule of law it claimed to be defending, and how irresponsibly the media abetted this crusade by valuing scoops and sales over the truth. Buy it now, read it carefully, and then re-read it just before election day.
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