Remembering the Source of Clinton Fatigue

The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr, by Duquesne law professor Ken Gormley, appears more than a decade after the sex-and-real estate scandal called Whitewater ebbed out, but even though Gormley does a fine job in retelling the tale, by the time the reader wades through the nearly 700 pages of bad judgments and self-serving decisions committed by Bill Clinton, Kenneth Starr, and the many colorful supporting players who populate this sad drama, a sickening cringe has resettled on the reader’s shoulders. Ten years turns out to be not nearly enough time at all.

It’s hard to review Clinton’s many tawdry escapades. Today we’re mocking John Edwards for his deceptions and delusions in trying to campaign for president and cover over his embarrassing relationship with Rielle Hunter. But Clinton did it, and obviously got away with it. More important, he got away with violating his path of office, in which he swore `to faithfully execute the laws.” Well, when you lie under oath, you commit perjury, and that’s a violation of his oath. He ought to have resigned.

But he ought not to have been driven out. The simple truth is that there were people who were out to get Clinton, who denied that he was a legitimate president and who sought his ouster. And their vicious campaign to drive him from office constituted a particularly sneaky and vicious kind of coup.

It was an ugly time. Gormley does a fair and reasonable job of recreating the story, and his interviews with many of the subjects are thoughtful and enlightening. There are even times when Gormley even manages to enlarge our understanding of this well-reported story, as in his account of the day the Special Prosecutor and the FBI detained Monica Lewinsky in an exercise of that is at once farcical and harrowing. Many readers will enjoy this book, but I wouldn’t advise them to wander far from a shower.