Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Hitchens’ book makes a convincing case against Clinton

Scott Dickensheets

Friday, June 18, 1999 | 9:23 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books/magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him at 259-4022 or dickens@lasvegassun.com.

He was, for a while, my guy. Before Travelgate; before Paula Jones; before the health care debacle; before his cold-hearted welfare "reform"; before the gutless evasion of "don't ask, don't tell"; before Asian soft money; before that woman and the cigar and the blue dress of shame; before the bushel of principles compromised for the sake of political expediency; before all the lies, lies, lies, Bill Clinton was, for a while, my guy.

He was, or so I'd been led to believe -- jeez, I'm so provincial sometimes, so unsophisticated -- the bracing liberal corrective to 12 years of Reagan-Bush.

And because it was an article of my faith that conservatives have bank ledgers where their hearts should be, and liberals reckless idealism where their common sense should be -- which is to say, I was a stone romantic -- I cheered Clinton's election. At last! One of us! If I'd have examined his record, I might have known better, which is maybe why I never examined his record.

Four years later, I cheered his reelection, somewhat less wholeheartedly. He was, by then, the devil we knew, and I was relieved. As the token liberal in the family, I stuck up for my guy at reunion dinner tables.

For a while, I even thought it was funny, his ability to take a licking and keep on ticking. He gets knocked down, he gets up again, they're never gonna keep him down.

Well, no more. I used to be amused; now I'm just disgusted. There's only so long anyone other than Hillary can sustain such illusions. Me, I'm sad as hell and I'm not going to fake it anymore.

Such was the mindset I brought to Christopher Hitchens' new book, "No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton" (Verso, $19). A slim 113 pages, it's a compact but meaty indictment of William Jefferson Clinton.

A well-known liberal columnist and frequent guest on TV poli-sci shows seeking contrarian input, Hitchens first got mad at what he saw as Clinton's venality, and now, with this book, gets even. I read it during a spell in sick bay -- stomach flu, better now, thanks -- and ended up feeling worse.

His first words: "This little book has no hidden agenda. It is offered in the most cheerful and open polemical spirit, as an attack on a crooked president and a corrupt and reactionary administration." He rarely wavers from that thesis statement.

The juicy drama of a lefty hefty attacking a president of similar political stripe is spoiled rather quickly as Hitchens portrays Clinton as, in a sense, partyless. That's the soul of Clinton's Dick-Morris-inspired "triangulation" tactic: clothe Republican-style policies in Democratic-style pieties, thereby getting good poll position from an electorate that appreciates nice words but wants to see results, and, most important, appealing to donors on both sides.

The most egregious example, of course, was the Clinton administration's flint-hearted welfare act, "legislation that was more hasty, callous, short-term and ill-considered than anything the Republicans could have hoped to carry on their own."

"Clinton," Hitchens writes, "is the first modern politician to have assimilated the whole theory and practice of 'triangulation,' to have internalized it, and to have deployed it against both his own party and the Republicans, as well as against the democratic process itself."

Hardly a move the prez has made in his term and three-quarters fails to yield ammo for Hitchens' fish-in-a-barrel onslaught. He reports that the Clinton health care initiative was actually designed by the nation's four largest insurance conglomerates, which would have profited handsomely had it passed.

He details Clinton's cynical use of military action -- remember the so-called nerve gas factory in the Sudan? It wasn't -- as a diversionary tactic in times of personal and legal turmoil. He describes Clinton's rather iffy racial attitudes. He attacks the president's fund-raising practices.

He accuses then-Gov. Clinton of OK'ing the execution of a mentally impaired black double-murderer (who tellingly left a portion of his last meal "for later") solely to prevent being Willie Hortoned during his White House bid. As painted by Hitchens, Clinton emerges as a creature of pure political opportunism.

There's more, of course -- surprisingly so, in a book this physically slight. Hitchens' packs a lot into his dense but usually readable style, and despite his fondness for thesarus words and needlessly erudite asides, "No One Left to Lie To" is a bracing, biting piece of work. His anger is splendid, it is righteous, it is vastly entertaining and I'm frankly not sure just how far to trust it.

In general I don't put much faith in polemicists; the vocabulary of attack doesn't seem very useful in sorting out truths and consequences. Writers committed to aside are frequently not afraid to adjust the light to shade things their way.

While Hitchens' evidence is compelling, you can't help but wonder what got left out, what sensible pro-Clinton explanations were rejected in favor of more batty defenses. How reliable are his conclusions?

For example, he cites the pro-impeachment vote of Democratic Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold, saying it "forever negates the unending Clintonoid propaganda about a vast right-wing conspiracy ..." How, exactly, he doesn't make clear; to provincial, unsophisticated me, one principled Democrat does not a conspiracy negate.

Sadly, though, for disillusioned liberals, and for presidential politics in the future (the triangulations that have proven so useful to Clinton will surely become the norm), Hitchens' broader conclusions are difficult to argue with. Because he is fearless, intellectual and brimming with English cheek -- he wrote a book attacking Mother Teresa and raised pretty much the sole voice against the revisionist sorrow surrounding Princess Diana's death -- Hitchens saw through Clinton long before I did. But I can't imagine him, or anyone, taking much comfort in having been right.

Reading list

Among the treats in the June 14 Sports Illustrated is a one-pager easily missed in the rush toward the nice cover piece on hometown boy wonder Andre Agassi, or SI's investigation of the term-paper scandal at the University of Minnesota.

In the "Air and Space" media column, writer Leigh Montville takes a deep breath and admits he misses ... Howard Cosell. Oh, he hated Howard when he was alive, of course; everyone did. But now, given the "video vanilla" of most sportscasting, the increasingly strained nature of "SportsCenter" and the squirts of mock profundity at Cosell's old stomping grounds, "Monday Night Football" ("He could be the best right tackle to ever play the game!"), Howard's absence has left the sports tube without any bona fide characters.

"I don't have the actual numbers in front of me," Montville writes, "but I don't believe there has been one five-syllable word spoken on any sports broadcast since Howard left."

He concludes: "Come back, Howard. All is forgiven. Well, some of it, anyway."

And I thought I was sick.

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