-Cavet Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> -Cui Bono- From: http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/011100toobin-book-review.html January 11, 2000 BOOKS OF THE TIMES A Vast Conspiracy: Going Over Clinton's Enemies List Review by MICHIKO KAKUTANI A VAST CONSPIRACY The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President. By Jeffrey Toobin. 422 pages. Random House. $25.95. Vast Conspiracy," the title of Jeffrey Toobin's new book about the sex scandal that led to President Clinton's impeachment, comes of course from Hillary Clinton's accusation that a "vast right-wing conspiracy" had been working "against my husband since the day he announced for president." Although Toobin says he believes that Mrs. Clinton's remarks were delivered before she learned the truth of her husband's involvement with Monica Lewinsky, and although her remarks also reflect the self-pitying, go-on-the-attack stance routinely assumed by the administration whenever it has been under fire, Toobin comes to the conclusion that "there was indeed a 'vast right-wing conspiracy' to get the president." Toobin's highly partisan book does a dexterous job of showing how Kenneth Starr's office bungled its investigation of Clinton through a combination of zealotry, infighting and ineptitude; this portion of the book was recently excerpted in The New Yorker. But the book consistently plays down the role that the president himself played in triggering and sustaining the ordeal the country went through for so many months. Toobin makes the dubious assertion that not only the Paula Jones case but the Whitewater investigation as well exist "only because of the efforts of Clinton's right-wing political enemies." He goes on to argue that scarcely "a single prominent Democrat or Clinton supporter" was "convinced by the evidence to change sides," never mind that longtime Clinton allies like Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and the president's former aide George Stephanopoulos, among many others, harshly criticized Clinton's behavior. Whereas the legal expertise of Toobin -- a former assistant U.S. attorney and an associate counsel in the office of the independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh -- helped him present a powerfully argued assessment of the O.J. Simpson case in his last book, "The Run of His Life" (1996), the narrowly legalistic approach here often results in a tin ear when it comes to the subjects of politics and governance. Although one of the themes of this book is what Toobin calls "the legal system's takeover of the political system" -- meaning the growing efforts on the part of liberal, and more recently right-wing, activists to use the courts to target and change laws -- he tends to look at the actions of Clinton and his associates strictly in terms of criminal law. He writes that no one could say "with the specificity required for a criminal case, what Bill and Hillary Clinton had done wrong" in terms of Whitewater, that scarcely anyone could "articulate any criminal offense the president might have committed" with "Filegate" or the campaign finance scandal, and that Clinton's conduct in the Monica Lewinsky case was "shabby, but not illegal." Such arguments suggest that elected officials need not especially worry about ethical conflicts, compromising financial entanglements or reckless behavior as long as they have not committed an actual crime. Toobin reaches the conclusion that the whole impeachment crisis "was never anything more than it appeared to be -- that of a humiliated middle-aged husband who lied when he was caught having an affair with a young woman." By focusing on sex, not the president's lies under oath, this assessment ignores Clinton's failure in his constitutional duty to uphold the rule of law; in the words of Judge Susan Webber Wright (who presided over the Paula Jones case), he deliberately "undermined the integrity of the judicial system." It ignores his lies not only to his family, but also to his staff, to members of Congress and to the American public, his using others to lie for him while imperiling the political agenda he was elected to help implement. For that matter, Toobin blames the media and the legal system, not Clinton's stonewalling, for creating a new set of victims: "the witnesses who had to hire lawyers, the targets who had to live in fear, the investigating agents who had to turn away from more important work and the public that was distracted from the real business of government and, of course, had to pay the bill." While Toobin observes that Clinton dealt with the crisis "not with candor and grace, but rather with the dishonesty and self-pity that are among the touchstones of his character," he consistently portrays the president as a victim of "extremists of the political right who tried to use the legal system to undo elections -- in particular the two that put Bill Clinton in the White House." Toobin spends the better part of this book railing against Clinton's adversaries, whom he says "appeared literally consumed with hatred for him." "They were willing to trample all standards of fairness -- not to mention the Constitution -- in their effort to drive him from office," he says. "They ranged from one-case-only zealots in the cause of fighting sexual harassment to one-defendant-only federal prosecutors, and they shared only a willingness to misuse the law and the courts in their effort to destroy Bill Clinton." In the course of this book we are given cutting portraits of people like Cliff Jackson, the longtime Clinton nemesis who leaked reports about the president's draft record, and Randall Terry, the founder of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue. The reporter Michael Isikoff, who is described as Newsweek's "in-house expert on Clinton's sex life," is lumped in with these enemies and is taken to task for writing a book about the scandal. As for Kenneth Starr, he is characterized as "Babbitt with a badge," his investigative team as having "an obsession with meaningless atmospherics" and "a predilection for canine zeal over solid prosecutorial judgment." Toobin persuasively argues that Starr's decision not to give Monica Lewinsky immunity in February 1998, as two of his more levelheaded prosecutors recommended, helped ensure the president's survival. By the time the deal was finally made 176 days later, Toobin writes, "the political and legal terrain had been transformed since those frenzied first days of the scandal"; the delay of nearly half a year "had allowed the country to come to terms with the fact that the president probably had had the affair with the intern -- but that he had managed to do a pretty good job anyway." Yet compelling as Toobin's account of Starr's botched investigation may be, it is undermined by contradictions and perplexing assertions. On one page Toobin writes that the prosecutor "was a consummate Washington careerist who navigated the capital more by self-interest than by ideology"; two pages later he writes that Starr "was a committed political conservative who stood outspokenly opposed to Clinton on virtually every controversial issue of the day." In one passage Toobin comes down hard on the book agent Lucianne Goldberg for reflecting "the new face on American politics -- personal, petty, and mean." In the same paragraph he indulges in some petty meanness himself, cattily describing Ms. Goldberg as emerging "from a virtual space somewhere between the Republican National Convention and the bar scene in 'Star Wars,"' like Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard," "her heart full of murder and longing." The most telling description in this willfully subjective book, however, is attached to Clinton who, in comparison with his adversaries, Toobin writes, emerges as "the good guy in this struggle," a dubious assessment of the chief protagonist in a saga decidedly bereft of heroes. ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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