Customer Reviews

Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Finally there is a definitive book on the events of the past year. Isikoff has written a thoroughly engrossing book that will be used for generations to come to explain why Bill Clinton was impeached. There is a lot to hate in this book if you are a die-hard partisan. Clinton supporters can react with righteous indignation about the conduct of Tripp and Goldberg while Clinton haters can relish in the accounts of the preditory womanizing and probable sexual assault of the President. There is a lot to learn in this book that has not been reported before. If the reader can take off the polital blinders for a moment and read this wonderfully written book objectively they will understand why the president deserved to be impeached and why Linda Tripp deserves to go to jail. This book finally establishes that:

1) Paula Jones is totally vindicated and deserves the most sympathy. No one deserves to be treated the way she was first by Clinton, then by the feminists and finally by the media.

2) Kathleen Willey was almost certainly assaulted by the President.

3) The President used private detectives to smear and intimidate women with whom he had sexual contact (consentual or not). Abuses of power that should disturb even the most strident Clinton defender.

4) Linda Tripp illegally and immorally set up Monica Lewinsky and the president. She and Goldberg's actions should disturb even the most rabid Clinton-hater.

5) The investigation by the Office of the Independent Counsel was probably beyond their scope and should be looked into further.

There seem to be no heros in this book but very clear villains. In the end I think Clinton and Tripp deserve each other.

It doesn't get any more in depth than this folks. Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek reporter largely acknowledged as having broken the Monica Lewinsky scandal, gives all the sordid details, and not just about Monica...

The book lays out the pre-scandal hub-bub. Closed door editorial meetings in New York. The ins-and-outs of how cyber journal-hound Matt Drudge dredged up the story. The checking and rechecking of facts and sources. Sure it's a riveting story. Sure, we all know how it ends. But if you're into the muckety-muck of Inside-the-Beltway politics and Big Journalism, 'Uncovering Clinton' will not disappoint. Years after the fact, the whole affair seems almost surreal.

Isikoff's book provides a detailed blueprint to events we are all, regretfully, too familiar with, showing with great clarity the incestuous links and synergies between the known and lesser known players in all sides of this historical melodrama. Nobody looks good: yes, there was a right wing cabal squaring Chicago, Arkansas, Philadelphia and Washington DC; yes, in all probability Starr&staff had a political agenda in pursuing his loose legal mandate; yes, Paula Jones was probably telling the truth; yes, Paula Jones was used by the right wing and thoroughly betrayed by organized feminism; yes, Linda Tripp was every bit the Wicked Witch of the West, gossip and schemer long before Monica entered the picture; yes many of the "pundits" we would see on cableTV were in fact were players in the melodrama, with ties to one faction or another; yes, Clinton was manipulative and sleazy; yes Clinton was lucky in his choice of enemies, particularly in the House of Representatives, a pathetic bunch more interested in scoring political low-points than addressing an issue (which explains in some way how ineffective they were in persuading the American people of the appropriateness of their course); yes Clinton was lucky in his choice of friends who with enormous zeal would put their own reputations on the line and viciously attack that of others to defend allegations which they themselves, as most Americans at the time, probably believed to be more plausible than not; yes, organized feminists in particular behaved hypocritically in dealing with the women in this tale.....no allegation brought forth in the Anita Hill controversy came close to what happened here.

During Watergate the villains were clearly villanous and their actions brought forth dignified and patriotic behavior in Congress. Clinton's scandals seem to have soiled everyone who has come in contact with them on all sides of the story. Indeed, the American people have a right to paraphrase Shakespeare and say "a plague to ALL their houses!!!"

One of this book's several virtues is Isikoff's perspective as the prime investigative reporter so close to center of events as to feel, at times, drawn into the conflict as a participant. His struggle to maintain personal and professional integrity in the earnest pursuit of an ever tawdrier story provides a rich counterpoint to the telling of this sorry episode.

I, like all Americans were indeed part of this tale, so I think it's unfair to finish without sharing where I find myself today: I am glad that Clinton was not convicted.....a conviction would have set a worse precedent than acquittal; I can hardly wait for his term to end. Both the White House and the House of Representatives are in dire need of thorough housecleaning.

The Editor and most other reviewers have done an excellent job in reviewing this book, and here I would like to concentrate on some aspects that are important to me. Isikoff points out that Nixon and Clinton both hated their enemies, but that they were different in an important respect: Nixon deep down had a suspicion that his critics might be right, but Clinton deep down believes that his enemies are scum. He also concludes that Clinton is far more psychologically disturbed than the public ever imagined, and goes into considerable evidence involving Clinton's previous behavior with women.

What I myself find unpardonable about the whole issue is the effect that the events had on the young people of the USA. I was in the High Schools, the Middle Schools, the Universities, and even the Elementary Schools as a teacher when the stories broke and the President contradicted himself and finally admitted some of his mistakes. (I go back and forth between teaching mathematics and private math-physics consulting.) The young generation took Clinton and Lewinsky's behavior as role models to an enormous extent. In and out of classes, they cheered the two of them, and the more blatant their "alleged" affair became, the more the immoral and unethical conduct itself was cheered. Students did not merely support Clinton and Lewinsky. They supported what they did, how they did it, when they did it, why they did it, and they publicly stated again and again that in effect they intended to do it too. It was no longer merely Democrat against Republican. It was getting thrills by cheating on your wife or husband, by having sex and thrills in public or via public exposure, and having thrills by stepping on your subordinates and hurting others. This is the generation, in Southern California at least, that is being defended by the teaching and school administration establishment as really doing well in their grades - contrary to the repeated evidence of testing scores compared to other states and other countries. I found, on the contrary, that except at the university level there were only a handful of students interested in studying rather than "cooling it" and abandoning their responsibilities.

I know the argument of the Democrats, and I sympathize to some extent, but not enough to tolerate incompetence and immorality of the type that was present before the collapse of Ancient Rome. The Democrats usually say: he's our only hope for Higher Education Funding and Social Programs. What kind of social program is the collapse of Ancient Rome? What kind of social program is the Crucifixion of Christians or the incineration of Jews which Ancient Rome in its worst days developed and handed down to its admirers and imitators like the Nazis and Fascists? What kind of social program creates a young generation of monsters?

Maybe there is a poor choice between liberal immorality and conservative unconcern. But if we reward and perpetuate the social program already put in place by monsters, we become monsters. We then agree with Marcus Aurelius that the good of Rome is buried while the evil lives on. Is that what we want?

It will be immediately evident to anyone who reads this book that some of the reviewers below didn't even pick this book up, as they seem to be responding to some concept of what they think it (or he--the author) represent, rather than the book itself--which is one of the most gripping narratives I've read in years, and the fact that it paints the most telling portrait of our president yet, and is filled with never-before-disclosed stories, and is easily the most important book about both the powers and the processes behind the scenes in the press, are all icing on the cake for readers. Isikoff comes off as more honest (and insightful) than any of the multitude of players caught up in the whirlwind of scandals that have come to plague the Clinton presidency, and his book is by far the most important--and most entertaining--to come out of those scandals.

I find it self serving when an inner circle of columnists, writers and reporters have to write online reviews promoting a book? If the book is so good why promote it so much? This is indicative of what I read. The book has nothing from something already reported by far baetter qualified writers and reporters. Read it if you have absoluely nothing to do, and then consider not reading it at all, you will get the message if you do not take my advice.

The book was disappointing because it never exposed just how and why Bob Fiske was replaced by Ken Starr. Even worse, Isikoff said he realized that he was in the middle of a conspiracy to get the President, but dwelled only upon the machinations of Tripp/ Goldberg/ Colter/ "The Elves," etc. He ignored the constitutional issue of members of the Legislature (Helms & Faircloth & ?) attempting a coup d'etat against the Prez in collusion with members of the Judiciary (Sentelle and the other two judges, & ?.) Isikoff ignored the important and dwelled upon the salacious. Someday, he might make a good gossip columnist. Don Loughlin, Bellingham, WA

The fifth anniversary of the Monica Lewinsky scandal came and went without little media coverage or public reaction. People seem to have forgotten how the whole world briefly revolved around a blue dress and Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff.

It is a safe bet Isikoff hasn't forgotten.

The title and author's name appear in equal size type along the spine of Uncovering Clinton/A Reporter's Story. This technical touch is an appropriate tribute to Isikoff's monumental ego. The reporter's megalomania is on display from the first page to the acknowledgements; one two-page footnote is dedicated to a relatively inconsequential detail that involves Iskoff. The journalist is pretty full of himself.

So why give such a vanity project three stars? The answer lies in the epilogue. The last pages of Uncovering Clinton probably best summarize the scandal and subsequent impeachment and acquittal of Clinton more than anything written at the time or since. One line about the press coverage, in particular, stands out:

"Sometimes the best stuff comes from the most unpleasant people."

Isikoff's summation is dead on.

Few heroes are to be found here. The "most unpleasant people" make the best sources, the best investigators, the best villians, the best liars, the best conspirators, and the best characters. New details emerge in these pages about Matt Drudge, Sidney Blumenthal, Lucianne Goldberg, Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan and assorted others, but none are rehabilitated by the fresh information. President Clinton is oddly absent from most pages. Yet when Clinton does appear he is a dark and furtive figure.

Iskioff, apparently unwittingly, portrays himself as a reporter with an oversized ego and just enough grandiosity to see his work as always for the greater good. Oddly, Paula Jones comes across as a very sympathetic character. Isikoff finds a surprising degree of merit in Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton. On the other hand, Isikoff's acceptance of Kathleen Willey's dubious tale throws this and other observations into some question. The Betty Currie the author portrays is potentially more culpable than she appeared. Without actually stating it, Isikoff's outrage at cyber-muckraker Drudge is an acknowledgement of the transition from the old era of the Establishment press to the Internet age of instant information. Drudge's scoops are a portent of things to come.

The book effectively is divided into three sections: the Jones lawsuit against the president, which started it all; the Willey accusation, which interjected Isikoff into the story; and the sexual scandal and subsequent cover-up that led to the president's impeachment. The author neatly ties them all together.

As the title indicates, this is a reporter's story. Neither scholarly nor shallow, Uncovering Clinton chronicles how one egotistical and dogged journalist covered, and in the process helped shape, a historic event that most people seem eager to forget. Given the sordid calamity Isikoff describes, the public reaction is understandable---and regrettable.

This is a powerful book. As a social and economic conservative member of the "vast right-wing conspiracy", and a psychologist, I feel vindicated by Michael Isikoff, as I was by David Maraniss. My from-a-distance impression based on Isikoff's and Maraniss' books, along with media coverage and my personal observations, suggests that President Clinton shares a personality disorder with many politicians on the "vast left-wing conspiracy" side of the aisle. This disorder fuels their reach for power, prestige, and control, in the name of "democracy and justice". Clinton's personal war on the Serbs is a symptom of this, and his possible, dissocial and narcissistic personality disorder, as illuminated by Isikoff. Clinton's abuse of Monica Lewinski, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willley, et al, and attacks on powerless people such as Linda Tripp, and his blatant insult of the U.S. Constitution and the justice system by his lies and coverups are also the result of this possible personality disorder. To a greater and more dangerous degree, this personality disorder dominated Ted Bundy and his behavior. I knew Bundy for a short time. Like Bill Clinton, he was charismatic, charming, manipulative, handsome, and very intelligent. Clinton's fun-loving and crowd-pleasing ways are assets in the same entertainment field represented by buffoons the like of Rivera and Flynt, but not in the U.S. Presidency. I see his public demeanor as a facade which may well cover up a lot of deeper and more deadly psychological motives and mental processes. Thank you, Michael Isikoff for further examining this very complex and potentially dangerous politician. Personally I never did trust Clinton and I am enraged that he is hiding behind his Serbian War to cover up his own failures as a man and human being. In this highly readable and must-buy book, Michael Isikoff validates my distrust. To both the "vast right-wing and left-wing conspiracies", and all the rest, I say, buy and study this book.

I barely followed the whole Monicagate story. I watched not one minute of the impeachment trial. Why not? Because it didn't interest me and I'm a Clinton supporter. I cant stand the rightwingers who were out to get Clinton. But this book is amazing. I read it in two days. It puts the whole story together for you and it made me realize that a pretty sick dude is running our country. Isikoff is totally fair. Although the reader develops new sympathy for Paula Jones, the villain of the book has got to be Linda Tripp. And Clinton. But the bottom line: this book is so well written and so engaging that I recommend it to Clinton admirers and Clinton haters both. Although, I gotta say, it's hard to be an admirer after reading this book. Bravo, Isikoff!!