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The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton Paperback – Box Calendar, February 3, 2001
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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.
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateFebruary 3, 2001
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.96 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100312273193
- ISBN-13978-0312273194
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Review
“Multitudes of historians will write multitudes of books--but a hundred years from now the primary source on the so-called Clinton scandals will still be The Hunting of the President by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons.” ―James Carville
“The true story of those pursuing imagined demons is more entertaining and instructive than the fevered fantasies spun to frighten us...On the Clinton scandals, this is the book by which to judge all others.” ―The Denver Post
“It is a dense, penetrating...walk down the back alleys of what Hillary Clinton famously called a 'vast right-wing conspiracy'...Dogged and thorough.” ―The Boston Globe
“It's frightening to realize how easily a loose cabal of often well-financed Clinton haters manipulated a press overly distrustful of government. This [is an] eminently readable and thorough--as well as thoroughly maddening--study.” ―Seattle Weekly
“If you want to know what's really been going on, you have a good book here...you have the Joe Conascon and Gene Lyons book which explains how this all happened.” ―President Bill Clinton (speaking of Whitewater)
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.
Joe Conason is the national correspondent for the New York Observer, where he writes a political column that is distributed by the United Features Syndicate. He is also a contributing editor for Talk magazine and a contributor to Salon.com. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper's, The New Yorker, and many other publications. He is the author of Big Lies, The Hunting of the President, and It Can Happen Here.
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition (February 3, 2001)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0312273193
- ISBN-13 : 978-0312273194
- Item Weight : 1.21 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.96 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,059,738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,286 in Journalism Writing Reference (Books)
- #11,044 in Communication & Media Studies
- #13,619 in Political Leader Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

Gene Lyons is an award-winning author, columnist, horseman, dog-lover, reformed rugby player, and apprentice redneck who lives on a gravel road in an Arkansas county with more cows than people. He’s written four books on very different topics, and co-wrote with Joe Conason The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton.
A nationally-syndicated columnist, Lyons spent 18 years as the token non-right wing crackpot on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette op-ed page, before finding a more congenial home base at the Arkansas Times. His column is also posted weekly at Salon.com. He sometimes gets really, really sick of politics and politicians, and wanders down to the barn. There are rivalries among the ungulates, but no prevarication.
Lyons was born on September 20, 1943 in Elizabeth, N.J., descended from hardy Irish-Catholic peasant stock. His father lived by two maxims: First, “You’re no better than anybody else; and nobody’s better than you!” a succinct expression of the Irish-American world view. Lyons considers it his personal credo. Second, “Nobody likes a smartass,” which he hasn’t particularly found to be true. His literary heroes are Jonathan Swift and George Orwell.
Educated at public schools in Elizabeth and Chatham, N.J., Lyons graduated from Rutgers University in 1965. He earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia in 1969. On his first day in Charlottesville, he met an Arkansas coach’s daughter studying history there, whom he eventually followed home from school. After teaching literature and writing at the Universities of Massachusetts, Texas and Arkansas, Lyons decided he was unsuited for academia and resigned to write full time.
Working out of Little Rock, Lyons has written hundreds of essays, articles and reviews for magazines such as Harper’s, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Esquire, the New York Times Magazine and Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, Slate, Salon, Oxford American and Washington Monthly. In 1980, he won the National Magazine Award for a Texas Monthly article called “Why Teachers Can’t Teach.” He was an associate editor there in 1980, and a general editor at Newsweek from 1981-86, writing mainly reviews and back-of-the-book features.
Lyons’ book The Higher Illiteracy, a greatest-hits collection, was published in 1988 by the University of Arkansas press. In 1993, Simon & Schuster published Widow’s Web, a true crime account of two notorious murders that held the state of Arkansas in thrall for years. “Gaudier than the state fair and more passionate than an Arkansas-Texas football game,” he wrote “[the case] became a public entertainment having less to do with facts than with the passions and prejudices of its audience. Yet for all the zeal with which Arkansans followed the story’s every twist and turn…they never really had a clue.”
Bill Clinton’s presidency dragged Lyons into political journalism. His book Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater was published by Franklin Square Press in 1996. Co-written with Joe Conason, The Hunting of the President was published in 2000 by St. Martin’s press. It became both a New York Times bestseller and a 2004 documentary film directed by Nikolas Perry and Harry Thomason. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, it was an official selection at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Lyons and his wife Diane have two adult sons. They live near Houston (pop. 159) in Perry County, Arkansas with a large menagerie of dogs, cats, horses, a flock of chickens, and a growing herd of Fleckvieh Simmental cows. Along with his agricultural labors, Lyons is writing a memoir called Animal Passion, essentially a history of his and Diane’s marriage in pets. The opening chapter appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of the Oxford American.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Joe Conason (born January 25, 1954) is an American journalist, author and liberal political commentator. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo, a daily political newsletter and website that features breaking news as well as commentary and analysis from influential progressive thinkers. Since 2006, he has served as editor of Type Investigations, a nonprofit journalism center.
One of the country's most popular political columnists, his articles have appeared in dozens of publications around the world including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, The Guardian, Salon, The Village Voice and Harpers.
Conason authored two New York Times best selling books, The Hunting of the President and Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth. His last book, Man of the World, focused on the post-presidency of Bill Clinton. Coming in July 2024 is The Longest Con. A winner of the New York Press Club's Byline Award, Conason has covered every American presidential election since 1980.
He and his family live in New York City.
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Conason and Lyons perform a devastating autopsy on the right's campaign to destroy Clinton before he even announced his candidacy for president in 1991, through both terms of his presidency. As someone who voted for Clinton twice (and would happily do so again), I knew Clinton had enemies, but I didn't know he had this many who were this menacing.
The authors lay out in stunning detail the lies and half truths that were willingly perpetrated by the mainstream media, discussing topics like the Foster suicide (many were convinced/hoping that it was a Clinton-sponsored murder), Troopergate, Filegate, Ken Starr and the wanton abuse of his Independent Council powers and much, much more. The above topics have been discussed ad nauseum in other books and articles, but the authors go further, detailing the many right-wing backed publications such as The American Spectator, the wealthy right wing tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife and his backing of the Arkansas Project, William Renquist and his role in Whitewater and the Starr appointment, and most importantly in this reader's eyes, how the first independent council, Robert Fiske, was ousted after he couldn't find any wrongdoing on the part of the Clintons. This paved the way for Starr's appointment, who would stop at nothing to get something on the Clintons.
Conason and Lyons also detail the highly unethical treatment of Monica Lewinsky at the hands of Starr and his deputies. Speaking of Monica, the authors gain credibility by not condoning or even trying to explain away Clinton's moral lapses with Monica and other women, but they also detail the credibility problems of many Clinton accusers, namely Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones.
This book simply must be read to be believed. The authors certainly got my partisan blood boiling all over again, 90s style, about what the Republicans did to try to bring down a good but imperfect man. This book makes one wonder where the "liberal media" was during the 1990s, when even the most incredibly idiotic rumors about Clinton, after being reported in a publication of ill repute, would be picked up by the mainstream media. The authors rightly conclude that publications like The Washington Post and the New York Times (the latter of which broke Whitewater and was perhaps eager to make up for getting scooped during Watergate) had too much invested in Whitewater as time went on for the stories to come up empty. Hence, the papers kept after a story that never was really there in the first place. Even more outrageous, during critical junctures during Starr's investigation, when information came to light that proved highly favorable to the Clintons, it went largely unreported by two of America's most "reputable" newspapers.
My one minor complaint about the book is that it did not detail the impeachment proceedings at all, and the impeachment and the GOP's behavior during that show trial is every bit as outrageous as what led up to it. Had Conason and Lyons written the full story about the impeachment, this could be THE ultimate book from A to Z about the GOP's war on the Clintons. (Perhaps we'll see a part II?) But, this is still probably the best, most meticulously detailed book on the right's campaign to destroy Bill and Hillary. Highly recommended.
Even so, I keep my mind open until "the book comes out." As a public relations professional myself I am all too aware of how easy it is to manipulate the press on a local level. Clearly it isn't much more difficult on a national level.
The recent press accounts stating the Clintons defaced the White House prove the point. Once everything calmed down, a statement from the White House said no vandalism took place. In fact the evidence at this point appears to point to dirty tricks on the part of the Bush team.
First the national press led us to believe the Clintons had accepted gifts in an unprecedented number, but once again, when the smoke had cleared, we learned the truth. The paperwork for the gifts from all eight years were processed in the last few weeks which misled the press! The Clintons did not receive as many gifts (stated in terms of $ value) as the Elder Bushes.
If only I could believe the press didn't read the documents properly. But I think the national press corps is as sloppy as what I sometimes see here in my dusty little corner of the world.
The whole story of the Rich pardon has not YET been told. Considering how many out and out lies have been told about Clinton I will withhold judgment until the truth has had a chance to show itself.
This kind of attack on a president is not unprecedented. Remember that none other than Thomas Jefferson supported the efforts of a propagandist who called President Adams - as fine a President as this country has ever had - a hermaphrodite. (?) President Lincoln was vilified in the press from the day he was elected, not unlike Clinton. Roosevelt haters still write the newspaper in my city to express their contempt. Reader beware!
Read "Fools for Scandal" and then read this very fine book. Love Clinton or hate him, we need to be very skeptical of the press. The country has a FREE press and clearly the press is FREE to be dead wrong and they prove it quite often. I agree with the writer who called the hunting of Clinton a case of mass hysteria. The writers of history, let us pray, will clean up the mess the press has made of this.
Always read and consider the sources quoted. Look for two sources before you even consider believing a news story. Remember original sources count, hearsay doesn't. Maintain a healthy skepticism and an open mind until you find the truth. We must stay informed and be smart enough not to fall for claptrap.



