Mostly Legal
Customer Rating: 
Nobody comes out of this story looking particularly good -- in case there were any doubts. Jeffrey Toobin has carefully gone over the historical and legal issues and can find no one who lacks culpability. Yes, actually, there was a "vast conspiracy" but it was a conspiracy of lawyers more than politicians. The system has changed. Dissatisfied with political arrangements we now try to shape them to our liking by legal means rather than through the political process. If you don't like someone, you smear him, accuse him, try him, and throw him or her out of office instead of waiting for the next election. With lawyers as eager intermediaries, Toobin shows us a "hate Clinton" crowd on the right and Clinton and his advisors on the other. Clinton himself, ignoring advice, acted in such a way as to seem almost actively helping his enemies. Ken Starr, appointed an Independent Counsel with almost unlimited powers in the wake of Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre", pursued Clinton's history through a real-estate transaction years earlier. He found nothing justiciable and was about to fold, when it was pointed out to him that there was a vague and half-hidden link in his charter that would allow him to switch from Whitewater to Lewinsky. He made the leap without thinking a great deal about it and the result was the pasquinade the whole world saw on television. Toobin feels that everyone involved should be ashamed of himself. I agree.
A classic in the making
Customer Rating: I suspect A VAST CONSPIRACY will become one of the classic acounts of the Clinton impeachment scandal. Toobin distinguishes himself with thoroughness, factual clarity, and analytical even-handedness. He is willing to dissect and criticize both sides. His conclusion--that the Constitution-shredding rage of Clinton's attackers trumped the president's tawdry adultery and lying--is spot-on, lights out, dead-solid perfect.
High points include a lucid first chapter that outlines Toobin's themes; fine thumbnail sketches of the personalities involved; and dramatic recreations of key events, like the interrogation of Monica Lewinsky and former Senator Dale Bumpers' address to the Senate at the climax of the trial. Toobin sees America's post-World War II tendency to settle political questions through court decisions as the major cause of the impeachment. Analyzing this tendency, he demonstrates his even-handedness by noting that it started with left-wing operatives like those in the civil rights and environmental movements, but that right-wing activists eventually used the same tactics to try to nullify the 1996 election of Bill Clinton. Toobin also points out how the thinking of feminists and the Christian right--usually bitter political enemies--converged in the "character" issue. This, in turn, provided cover for ratings-hungry media outlets eager to investigate the private lives of those in power. Although Toobin occasionally resorts to irony or even sarcasm, he never succumbs to the breathless vituperation of so many in the anti-Clinton camp ...
But I do agree with another reviewer that Toobin might have devoted more space to the media's role in creating and sustaining the scandal. It was absolutely vital. From swarming talk show hosts to stars of network news organizations, media figures did more than their share to keep the story going, despite the fact that 2/3 of the American people never though the crimes warranted the proposed punishment. (And, after a year-plus of all-Monica-all-the-time, I'm never again going to be able to hear the phrase "liberal media bias" without laughing.)
What most troubles me about the impeachment is that the same thing could happen again. There's now a template: a minority who never accepted the legitimacy of Clinton's election victories skillfully and ruthlessly exploited media and the courts to sidetrack the entire country for more than a year. A VAST CONSPIRACY shows the fatuousness of many of their claims. For instance, the five investigations of the death of Vincent Foster by agencies ranging from the FBI to the Starr commission came to verdicts of suicide, suicide, suicide, suicide, and suicide. But to this day, many Clinton-haters insist the president and/or his wife murdered Foster, then perpetrated a nefarious cover-up. I have no doubt that if Gore had been president on September 11, 2001, we'd already be deep into investigations and speculation about impeachment.
Well-organized ideologues of the extreme right are far more numerous and single-minded than their left-wing bogeymen. I fear they'll use the same techniques to go after the next Democrat who dares to get elected president.
Until then, many thanks to Jeffrey Toobin, and five well-earned stars for this excellent book.
