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Its good to recount the whole whitewater thing but so much is left out. Connections and personalities are missing. This movie will really make you understand how good of a filmmaker Michael Moore really is.

Superb documentary version of a great book
THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT is a documentary version of the outstanding book by the same name by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons. Although the film starts by indicating that it is based on the book, this is only very loosely true. A great deal contained in the book is left out in the film, and the film contains a surprising amount of content that is not in the book. In the end, they complement one another marvelously.

The film begins with a shot of the United States Capitol with former Senator Dale Bumpers memorably defending Pres. Clinton during his impeachment trial. When he asks how it was that the president was being impeached for lying about what was merely a private wrongdoing the film cuts back to the earliest days of the Clinton administration, and goes through the various trumped up and absurd charges made against Clinton during the nineties, from Whitewater to the ridiculous charge of the murder of Vince Foster to Troopergate to the allegations of Paula Jones (which not even her lawyers believed). Like the book, the movie excells because it shows in great detail the lack of concern with truth that the Right displayed throughout all of this, and the extraorinarily organized and partisan nature of all the opposition to Clinton.

As an Arkansan, I especially appreciated the way in which the film explains the various Arkansas characters involved in the story. As a former student of Ouachita Baptist University, I knew Bob Riley (one of the finest and most fascinating individuals in Arkansas history, as highly decorated war hero, professor, and politician), whose widow is interviewed extensively in the film. I did not know Jim McDougal. His wife, Susan, emerges in the film as one of the great symbols of the affair, as she is crushed by Kenneth Starr's inhuman prosecution machine because she refuses to lie about either Bill Clinton or Hillary. Her dedication to truth is so great that she goes to prison (where she is housed with child murderers instead of the general prison population, by Starr's orders) rather than lie. She emerges as one of the few heroes in the tawdry persecution of Clinton, and one of the most innocent victims.

Like the book, this documentary is essential viewing for anyone wanting the understand the Clinton years. It is also a cautionary tale, because the Right wing machine that mindlessly and irrationally attack a moderate Democratic president in 1993 will unquestionably do the same with a new Democratic president in 2005. All Americans should find such politics of division reprehensible and utterly opposed to the commonweal.

The Vasty Deep
I have not yet bought the DVD, but I had occasion to see this film at a theatre in Little Rock, one of two such venues in the country. Less a vindication of Clinton than an indictment of the press, "Hunting" provides a timely commentary on the excesses of journalistic zeal that almost brought down a presidency. I was especially moved by the story of Susan McDougal, aka Joan of the Ozarks, who was treated like a serial killer during her near-two years in prison, after she ran afoul of nasty-minded Ken Starr and his minions. I also liked the brave and witty portrait of ex-Arkansas Governor Riley's wife, Claudia. The facts presented here may seem all too familiar by now, but we can thank authors Joe Conason and Gene Lyons for unearthing a good number of them. Students of history will long debate the merits of the Clinton presidency, but the incompetence of the press is now an established fact.