This is a rare book...a book for history written in the present moment.
There have been many scholarly reviews of this fine book. There have been many not so scholarly reviews by those whom Blumenthal rightly skewers. There have been many reviews by Clinton-haters who no doubt have not read this 800+page tome and who dismissed it out of hand.
Of course, any book that defends Bill Clinton during the time in which he was pilloried by his enemies and eventually impeached for 'lying' about consensual sex with a White House intern will bring out the usual cast of characters from those dismal times who will no doubt go to their graves proclaiming their righteousness and virtue no matter their side in the matter.
I freely admit that, I, too, am one of those. I accept Bill Clinton as a great President and person, warts and all.
And I accept Blumenthal's book, shortcomings and all. I suppose this is not the purpose of a reviewer, but after suffering through 8 years of constant war against a sitting President for the most mundane of private matters, I feel entitled to no longer care for any balance or fairness regarding those who would have gladly destroyed Clinton and in the process undermined the Great Experiment that is the American Democratic Republic.
While the likes of Walter Isaacson [CNN] and the drones at the Washington Post and New York Times who besmirched their own and their institutions' great heritages with constant and well-documented shoddy and shameful 'journalism' during the Clinton Wars, rant on about how self-serving Blumenthal is in this grand book, they cannot begin to defend themselves...period.
Overall, as I read I became enraged because "The Clinton Wars" proves in a splendid and extremely well-written manor all that I had believed but could never elucidate because I wasn't there like Blumenthal. He tells the brilliance of Clinton; his desire to do well by the American people..to make Government work for all of us...to work in the tradition of the Founding Fathers...to not have us work against each other.
For example, I shake my head in sadness when I read the 20 or so pages about the efforts that went into preparing the 1997 State of the Union address; the brain-storming sessions; the historical background; the directions from Clinton himself; the 'thinking dinners' with several historians from universities around the country with Clinton both listening, directing, leading, taking notes, encouraging vibrant debate; directing groups to break up and come back with even more specifics; all the time willing to listen, but always in control.
[Can you imagine Bush doing any of this?]
And in one poignant moment after describing this magnificent process of thought and ideas and debate and desire to do the best for his country...to do the job Clinton actually was naive enough to believe he was hired to do by the American people..after I was fully engaged in this 20 pages of intellectual dynamic...the last paragraph reads:
At 10:18 p.m., Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder received a call on his cell phone...It came from Jackie Bennett, ken Starr's deputy independent counsel. "We are sort of into a sensitive matter," read Bennett's notes of the conversation. "Breaking. Paying close attention to jurisdictional limits-confident sufficient jurisdiectional nexus. Involves people at and associated with White House." Starr's office wanted from the Justice Department-and the next day received-an expansion of its Whitewater probe on the basis of its allegations that Monica Lewinsky and Vernon Jordan were subornin perjury and that the President was obstructing justice in the Paula Jones case.
So here you have Clinton working in an intellectually charged atmosphere on just one item on his agenda...the State of the Union address..and the end of the day is puncuated by a call from Jackie Bennett, the most partisan of Starr's lynch mob about yet another outlandish and completely false trumped-up political allegation against Clinton .
It was yet another second-coming scandalized headline that would divert the Nation's Media and law enforcement apparatus from little things like 19 Arab men attending flight schools but only wanting to learn how to navigate 767's once airborne and not caring about landing.
It was yet again another smear that would divert anywhere from 10 to 40% of the FBI to Arkansas looking for Clinton paramours rather than following leads to Bin Laden. It was yet again irresponbile partisan Republican and Right Wing Media 24/7 squandering resources from following up on little things like an FBI agent's memo from Phoenix or Minneapolis.
In reading "The Clinton Wars" I kept getting the sense of such valuable time and resources wasted, of great things left undone because ugly and selfish men would rather have destroyed a President than have worked with him for the betterment of America.
Neither Bill Clinton nor Sid Blumenthal nor any in the White House are or were perfect. No one is. But imperfect men of great dreams and ideals are infinitely preferable to small-minded men of ruthless ambition.
Blumenthal brilliantly recounts the mighty struggle of Bill Clinton and those around him to do the best for America while fighting the most deadly battles against them personally and professionally. "The Clinton Wars" is at once an epic poem of great heroics and a tragedy of simple human failings. Bill Clinton is a man of many shortcomings and personal defects. He is also a man of great intellect and a great desire to do good. His heart is in the right place, of that there is no doubt. He is a man who does indeed elicit great feelings....love or hatred, but in the end, Blumenthal writes convincingly that not only did we as Americans lose out on a President who could have been our greatest, but also about a man who was more sinned against than sinning.
Buy and read this book.