REVIEW: A Vast Conspiracy by Jeffrey Toobin

 

I was a teenager when this was all going down and in college when this culminated in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. It was all the subject of a podcast that I listen to regularly and so I wanted to really get the behind the scenes story of what happened - the nuances that I was too oblivious to pick up on when it was going on. This doesn't just go into the Monica details though. He tries to figure out why an extramarital affair caused such a holdup in Congress. 

The title's source should be fairly obvious - on Good Morning America Hilary Clinton called it a vast right wing conspiracy. Toobin agrees with her but their reasons are kinda different. The scandal actually started with Paula Jones and the Paula Jones case originated with the President's political adversaries, who backed the lawsuit. He also opined that there was a conspiracy by the US legal system to take over the political system - think a separation of powers issue if you're a lawyer. Toobin looks at things like Whitewater being weaponized against Clinton before Monica even though there was no evidence to support criminal charges. 

Many people found this readable and it was insofar as language goes but I found it incredibly difficult to get through this book. It wasn't as interesting as I thought it was - perhaps Norton's biography of Monica is better (it's also on my list). It took me a lot longer to get through than I thought it would. Having said that, he did make the conspiracy more understandable and provided one coherent narrative - whether you agree with it or not.