About book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story Of The Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down A President (2000)
Complete and utter trash mixes with bold navigation through legal, political, and constitutional processes. Toobin, with liberties and licenses aside, illuminates every topic brightly and boldly with intelligent discussion and wise-cracking sarcasm. This book begins in a parking lot in Little Rock circa 1994 and ends in the ashes of late-90s kamikaze politics. The well-threaded thesis navigates three combustible and once tired forces that exploded in January 1998 -- well-financed and very bitter conservatives, invasive reporters and investigators (the running-on-fumes Starr office), and President Clinton's all-too-human weaknesses. The political and legal play-by-play is especially worth reading: as a former prosecutor, Toobin has a very good grasp on the plea/immunity negotiations between Lewinsky lawyers and Starr.An inherently fascinating topic with which to engage with, if only in the hopes of understanding these forces and hoping it never happens again. If that doesn't do, then a Tripp (haha) down memory lane will be fun enough. Get a used copy and haul this one to the beach.
I know what I remembered, being a Democrat and Clinton fan, and not following it too closely in the papers...Now I have a much better idea of how the Circus actually came to town, and I gotta say, I am even more disgusted than I was then. Toobin lays out the story with extensive sources in all its sordid detail. He is not a Clinton apologist, nor is he a Starr apologist. Mostly he lays out just the facts, as far as they can be known. There's a lot of facts, and his account is clear. And wretched. And revealing.And well-written, pretty much a page turner, especially towards the end.Overall, I am left with a feeling of sadness. And then I read today's papers, and the same self-interest trumping national interest dominates the action today. Maybe I am alone in doing so, but I call these people traitors. Please go away, or at the very least, hang your heads in shame and let someone who is interested in governing the country do so.
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This was a book our book club chose, and I really wasn't that interested in rehashing all the sordid details from the Clinton scandals. However, reading this some 15 years later it is clear this president for whatever reason (zipper problems not withstanding) created the most personal hatred against a sitting president in our history. This was not political hatred, it was personal and his time in office gave a catapulted start to the divisive right wing media strongholds that persist today from Ann Coulter to the Drudge report. Clinton's sexual problems were shameful, but the loss of civility and the vicious personal attacks are nothing less than unAmerican. Question is, once the genie's out of the bottle how do you put it back in? Worth reading and discussing from a basis of how do we get to productive discourse.
—Tracy Jenkins
Interesting read. It's another Toobin in-depth reporting of a legal crisis. His analysis of the case is insightful, and it gives a fantastic feel for just how grimy, personal, and absurd the whole case against Clinton was. However, I'm curious about his sourcing for many of the conversations in the book--e.g. Goldstein's and Tripp's stuff. Toobin is a trustworthy journalist, but I walked away from some of the behind-the-scenes stuff (especially with the prosecution witnesses and the less connected members of the 'vast right-wing conspiracy') wondering how faithfully Toobin's sources had reported events. This would irritate me a lot less if Toobin presented these vignettes with a [i]caveat emptor[i] about their reliability. Still, a very enjoyable read. Be warned that parts can be frustratingly petty, but that's just how Tripp et al were.
—Evan Rocher
