The Hunting Of The President Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)July 12th, 2004
THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT
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"If someone says, 'It's not about money,' it's about money -- and if someone says 'it's not about sex,' it's about sex." -- Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers quoting H.L. Mencken at Clinton's impeachment trial
Well before Arkansas governor William Jefferson Clinton announced his bid for the United States presidency, he had enemies conspiring to derail both his and his wife Hillary's political future. Using the titular best seller by Gene Lyons and Joe Conason as their basis, the screenwriting/directing duo of TV producer and 'friend of Bill' Harry Thomason and independent filmmaker Nickolas Perry (who also served as editor) make a case that right wing conspirators planned "The Hunting of the President."
Thomason and Perry have a wealth of material, which, despite their MTV paced editing and irreverent treatment, builds to some devastating conclusions. Like Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," this is one documentary that makes no bones about its agenda, and, indeed, its non-present directors display some of the same snarky attitude Moore is criticized for, yet the insidious nature of Thomason and Perry's subject is more chilling.
The affable 42nd President of the United States had enemies to spare motivated by profit, envy, politics, personal salvation, right-wing obsessiveness, moral outrage and just plain hatred. New Zealand reporter Andrew Cooper recounts his weird meeting with Everett Ham while he was camping on the banks of an Arkansas river. Ham offered Cooper lodging from which the young man observed secret meetings of A.R.I.A. (Alliance for the Rebirth of an Independent America), an organization formed to bring down Clinton, aboard Ham's houseboat. Writer David Brock (who wrote for the right-wing American Spectator throughout Clinton's presidency before infamously coming clean in "Blinded by the Right"), describes the workings of the like-minded Arkansas Project. The dubious local duo of disgruntled former Clinton employee Larry Nichols and local detective Larry Case, whose specialty was outing the sex scandals of public figures, brought the likes of Gennifer Flowers to the tabloids while Cliff Jackson, a former Oxford classmate of Clinton's, created Troopergate. Paula Jones is discredited as a political groupie who fell into the hands of the Falwell right. Falwell produced the Clinton Chronicles for TV, accusing the man of everything from drug smuggling to murder, then admits he couldn't verify all his facts.
At the time, I personally always regarded the reporting on Whitewater as so much white noise. It's gratifying to hear Reuter reporter Steve Barnes recall Newsweek's Jenny Carroll confiding that 'There's no there there' about Whitewater. The media is painted as a pack of competitors all afraid to be left behind on 'the next Watergate' story. David Hale, the chief Whitewater accuser who said Clinton pressured him into loaning money for the project, is shown to be a man so deep in his own nefarious economic dealings that he used Clinton to deflect attention. The film's second half is dominated by the heartbreaking testimony of Susan McDougal, who partnered with her husband Jim and the Clintons in the Whitewater development deal. She describes watching Jim slip into financial ruin and mental illness exacerbated by his agitation over an off the cuff unfulfilled promise Clinton made to his dying mother to give him a job. Jim was wooed and won by Ken Starr's team, but Susan's refusal to cooperate with them made her the martyr of the Clinton presidency. CNN analyst and New Yorker reporter Jeffrey Toobin calls time out against Ken Starr's presumably impartial appointment to the Independent Counsel describing him as a walking political conflict of interest who went so far as to send FBI agents to pull high school students out of rural classrooms for evidence in his witch hunt.
Of course, Clinton wasn't entirely innocent in his own undoing. The filmmakers barely mention Monica Lewinsky, but her appearance heralds Clinton's stupidity in playing into his own enemies' hands, costing him the loyalty of many of his defenders in the process. Still, the millions spent to impeach the president (James Carville tosses out a figure of $80 million) resulted in two counts thrown out by the Senate. There is no telling what the hounding of the president (one person talks about being astonished when Clinton is stopped to discuss the Paula Jones case during an international crisis) cost the American public overall, including the 2000 elections.
It is compelling content, and not the work of Thomason and Perry, that make "The Hunting of the President" of note, however. The filmmakers use jokey, often tenuous at best, cutaways (often from old black and white public domain movies) and flippant sound effects that undermine the film, distracting the viewer. Those who can focus through the effluence of unrelated imagery may still have difficulty keeping track of the cast of characters. Some interview subjects are identified during each and every of multiple appearances. Others, like the prominently used Claudia Riley, are introduced so quickly amidst the barrage of editing that one may not realize the relevance of their point of view for quite some time. The usual 'where are they now' informational credits appear at film's end tinged with sarcasm and interspersed with unclear sentiments like '...and the beat goes on.'
In creating an argument that provokes thought, though, "The Hunting of the President" succeeds in spite of itself.
B-
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