Blood Sport
The President and His Adversaries
By James B. Stewart
Simon & Schuster, 479 pages, $25
In novelistic fashion, James B. Stewart has purported to lay out the foul story of Whitewater and related scandals for readers who have had a hard time paying attention to its many twists and turns. Surely Whitewater is the stuff of novels, with its fascinating cast of power-hungry, money-grubbing politicians, bankers and lawyers who plied their trade with a disregard for truth, integrity and the law from Little Rock to the big city of spin control on the Potomac.
In its wake, the Whitewater affair has engulfed the lives of many people who have seen fit either to look the other way, cut corners, pay lip service to existing standards and regulations, or use their positions to hide or distort the facts as it suits their interest. This includes not merely the Clintons and their pals in Arkansas, but congressional inquisitors, presidential candidates, White House officials and big-time lawyers in Washington.
Although the ill-fated real estate venture named Whitewater Development Corp. went bankrupt long ago, it is still a thriving concern in a bankrupt political culture where truth has become the biggest victim of all. Even Stewart, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Den of Thieves,” about Wall Street corruption, and a writer of impeccable reputation, cannot escape Whitewater’s tarring effect. He derived the title, “Blood Sport,” from Vince Foster’s so-called suicide note, in which Foster, deputy White House counsel, said Washington was all about making sport of people’s reputations. To Stewart, “Blood Sport” came to signify the political culture’s utter disrespect for truth.
Yet he leaves himself open to suspicion that he has engaged in a similar kind of sport in this account. At crucial moments, it appears to rely heavily on the self-serving remembrances of high-flying financial finagler Susan McDougal, now on trial in Arkansas for alleged wrongdoing in the Whitewater affair along with her husband, Jim McDougal, the prime manipulator who got the Clintons involved in Whitewater.
As Stewart puts himself inside the heads of the major players in one reconstructed conversation after another, one is never quite sure whose mind he is tapping to move the narrative along. When an alleged meeting, incident or the Clintons’ version of events is inconsistent with his story line, he relegates the conflicting information to a footnote. This book is so rich in footnotes that, taken together, they would make a nice narrative too. But the technique is hard on the reader and, one often fears, a facile way for the writer to be dismissive.
All too often, Stewart is more inclined to believe Susan McDougal than the person she hates, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who comes across as a snob, a liar and perhaps a felon. He also believes Jim McDougal rather than Bill Clinton on a crucial part of the Whitewater story, in which Clinton is alleged to have asked McDougal to put Mrs. Clinton, an attorney in the Rose Law Firm, on retainer for McDougal’s Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan.
Some skeptical readers might wonder if Stewart is so harsh on the Clintons because they approached him–through Mrs. Clinton’s friend, Susan Thomases–about writing their side of the story and then rejected him after a fateful interview with the first lady herself. Hell hath no fury like a Pulitzer Prize winner scorned, one is tempted to think. (Footnote: The Clintons are inclined to this view, although it seems a bit far-fetched.) That thought is immediately supplanted by another: How could the Clintons have been so stupid as to think Stewart would have been their fuzzy little lap dog? (Footnote: Stewart certainly gave that impression to Thomases and Mrs. Clinton before the White House came to its senses.)
The Clintons’ Whitewater story does strain credulity. Their position that they were merely passive investors in the land-development scheme requires a greater reservoir of faith than most healthy skeptics have. Stewart’s book effectively makes clear why the president, and especially his wife, have reason to be concerned about the special prosecutor’s investigation. Unfortunately, Stewart does not clear up all the muddy waters of Whitewater. The actual incidents in Arkansas make up less than one-third of the book. The remainder is a strange melange of Troopergate, involving Clinton’s womanizing escapades; the controversy over Foster’s death; how reporters uncovered the story; and how the Clintons ineptly dealt with the scandal in Washington.
The book’s promoters, and many of Stewart’s pundit pals in Washington and right-wing conspiracy theorists, would have you think this is the definitive story of Whitewater. (Footnote: It’s not. Wait for all the facts to come out.)
