The quickest way to make people forget a scandal is to talk about it as much as possible, on television, in the papers, and so on. Over and over you flog the same dead horse, and pretty soon people start getting fed up. "They're dragging this out!" they say. "Haven't we had enough?" After a couple of weeks the saturation effect is such that nobody wants to hear another word about the scandal.
Andrea Camilleri, The Shape of Water
It was strange to be reading a Sicilian police procedural and stumble upon the passage above which explains in a nutshell how Bill Clinton survived his sex scandals. Even six years on there's a certain sense that we've had enough and a natural inclination to avert our eyes from what was a national disgrace. But Candice Jackson has written a definitive account of the various crimes and misdemeanors that is well worth reading. In particular, she's made two authorial decisions that make the book truly powerful. For one thing, she writes from the perspective of Bill Clinton's victims and analyzes his actions through the lens of liberal/feminist dogma. Anyone with any respect for women must be offended by what Bill Clinton did to Paula Jones or Kathleen Willey, but when you compare the incidents and the reactions to them with the way Democrats have told us we should treat workplace sexual harassment they become all the more appalling for the cynicism and hypocrisy they entail. The other savvy choice is to present the episodes not in chronological order but in ascending (descending) order of their turpitude. Thus, she starts by discussing what might be dismissed as mere adulterous dalliances but builds through the Willey and Jones cases, which involve some criminality or another, until she ends with what can only be called Bill Clinton's rape of Juanita Broaddrick. The cumulative power of this approach is quite devastating and makes the book a must-read for anyone hoping to understand Bill Clinton.
(Reviewed:01-Dec-05)
Grade: (A)
