History

When in 1997 Bill Clinton asked the writer Sidney Blumenthal to join him in the West Wing as his Assistant, Blumenthal was catapulted into the front fines of the Clinton wars. From Matt Drudge's opening salvo against him on his first day in the White House to his appearance as the only presidential aide ever to testify in an impeachment trial, Blumenthal was an actor in or witness to nearly all the battles of the Clinton presidency. Here is his stunning first-hand account of the extraordinary William Jefferson Clinton. The Clinton Wars begins in 1987, when Blumenthal first met Bill and Hillary Clinton. It is unique as a political memoir in its historical sweep, intellectual understanding of the American presidency and literary achievement by a senior advisor to President Clinton. Blumenthal's narrative of Clinton's second term, even more dramatic than the first, covers events as he experienced them behind closed doors in a White House under siege during the constitutional crisis of impeachment. But he does not neglect the wars being fought on other fronts - in Kosovo, in the struggle for peace in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, in the Gingrich-led Congres, and in the policy councils of the administration. And for British readers there is particular interest in Blumenthal's account of how Tony Blair and the President first met, and the remarkable relationship that developed between them. The Clinton Wars ends with the inside story of the fight to elect an embattled Al Gore in 2000 and to extend the legacy of the Clinton-Gore administration. This unrivalled history documents as never before the unprecedented assault on the highly successful Clinton presidency by the right wing which created a constitutional crisis by invading the President's personal life. Its shocking revelations of those who tried to overthrow a progressive, popular President go to the heart of the conflict Chat has continued beyond the Clinton years. The Clinton Wars is a lasting and thought-provoking contribution to twentieth-century history - indispensable to understanding the part, present and future of American, and world, politics.