Review of The Clinton Wars by an Entertaining but Often Harmful Idiot

Andrew Sullivan in The New York Observer -- First off, Mr. Blumenthal establishes lineage. This new Son of Man must be connected to the Old Testament. How to do so? By placing a scene at the start of the book in which the ghost of F.D.R. blesses the man from Hot Springs. So we start in Hyde Park. Sid goes ahead of a Presidential visit to pay his respects to his ancestors. The President follows, and places a red rose on F.D.R.’s and Eleanor’s white marble tomb. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I’m not making this following bit up: "An aide gently but insistently reminded [Clinton] that his time was limited. The turbulent world was tugging at him, starting with a boisterous crowd waiting at the local high school. ‘It’s so peaceful,’ Clinton whispered as he stared at the tomb. His mind was filled with great plans: universal healthcare, reducing the federal deficit, investments in education and the environment, cutting crime, remaking the welfare system, ending discrimination, to begin with."

To begin with? What on earth would be next? A space colony on Mars? But to ask such questions of this book is to mistake its essence. To ask how Sid knew what was going on in the President’s mind at that moment, is also to miss the point. And Sid doesn’t want us to miss the point: "In his pilgrimage to Hyde Park, Clinton sought to identify his innovations with the Rooseveltian spirit. Clinton had seen for himself the reliquaries, and now he could fix his sights on the road ahead. ‘I belong here,’ he remarked to me as he left Hyde Park." The religion to which Sid subscribes is a strange one. His faith is not in the ideals of the Democratic Party. It’s not in the political philosophy of any one thinker—indeed, Sid is oddly indifferent to political theory and has a reductively historicist view of political ideas. He doesn’t pledge his allegiance to some noble conception of America, but rather a noble conception of how America should be governed. To be precise, he’s loyal to an institution, the Democratic Party. Fealty to that institution—and its success at all costs—is the only moral criterion I can find in Mr. Blumenthal’s writing.