The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton - Hardcover

Conason, Joe; Lyons, Gene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312245475 ISBN 13: 9780312245474

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2000

Synopsis

When Hillary Clinton spoke of "a vast right-wing conspiracy" determined to bring down the president, many people dismissed the idea. Yet if the first lady's accusation was exaggerated, the facts that have since emerged point toward a covert and often concerted effort by Bill Clinton's enemies--abetted by his own reckless behavior--which led inexorably to impeachment. Clinton's foes launched a cascade of well-financed attacks that undermined American democracy and nearly destroyed the Clinton presidency.

In vivid prose, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, two award-winning veteran journalists, identify the antagonists, reveal their tactics, trace the millions of dollars that subsidized them, and examine how and why mainstream news organizations aided those who were determined to bring down Bill Clinton, The Hunting of the President may very well be the All the President's Men of this political regime.

About this title

Review

Unhappy reading for Republicans or political naïfs, The Hunting of the President is the story of a sustained and well-funded effort to discredit and defeat Bill Clinton, dating from his gubernatorial days in Arkansas and eventually leading to his impeachment trial. Award-winning journalists Joe Conason and Gene Lyons have crafted a tale as compulsively readable as a political thriller--paced, and at times worded, like a summer bestseller. Although they provide ample evidence of backstabbing, revenge, deceit, conniving, and "dirty tricks" in the struggle to oust Clinton, arguing that "the better the president and the country did, the more his adversaries appeared willing to endorse almost anything short of assassination to do him in," they also acknowledge that Clinton's reckless behavior, along with the "panicky, defensive, and occasionally less-than-perfectly-honest" responses of the White House press office, didn't hurt his opponents. Investigative journalism at its juiciest, The Hunting of the President is a surprising valediction to a far-from-angelic public leader who often outmaneuvered his enemies with otherworldly skill. --Regina Marler

About the Author

Joe Conason is the national correspondent for the New York Observer, where he writes a political column that is distrubuted by the United Features Syndicate. He is also a contributing editor for Talk magazine and a contributer to Salon.com. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper's, The New Yorker, and many other publications.

Gene Lyons won the National Magazine Award in 1980. He has written extensively for Newsweek, Harper's The Nation, The New Review of Books, Texas Monthly, Entertainment Weekly, and many other magazines. His books include The Higher Illiteracy (University of Arkansas, 1988), Widow's Web (Simon & Schuster, 1993), and Fools for Scandal (Franklin Square, 1996). He writes a political column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0312245475
• ISBN 13: 9780312245474
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304