Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: Verso

In his 1999 book "No one Left to Lie to: The Triangulation of William Jefferson Clinton, journalist Christopher Hitchens indicates that "Clintonism is not an idea, or a program; still less is it a principle.

It represents what might be termed - were it not for its murk - the distilled essence of consensus politics. Unremarkable in its constituent elements, which are a mixture of opportunist statecraft, crony capitalism, 'divide and rule' identity politics, and populist manipulation, Clintonism has nonetheless raised these ordinary practices to the level of theory." It has succeeded, argues the author, because of a stealthy appeal to the waning and insecure forces of an American liberalism gone bad.

Christopher Hitchens followed Governor Clinton through New Hampshire in 1992, and has remained as assiduous student of his methods ever since. In Ask Not, Tell Not, he profiles the rise and decline of prominent Clintonoids, from George Stephanopolous to the First Lady. He scrutinizes the debased new language in which the discourse of Clintonism has been couched, and proposes that, if successful, the Clinton machine will become the model of pseudo-democracy for the coming century.

Scoffing at the idea that the far right of the Republican Party was poised to seize the American State, Hitchens points out that the real coup d'etat was executed by a Democratic president who took every remnant of New Deal liberalism in his party and tore it to shreds. In this, he was assisted by finance from Miami Cuban mobsters and advice from his only friend and closest consultant, Dick Morris, a conservative Republican. Public attention which might otherwise have tried to prevent this tragedy was diverted, together with the sound judgment of many on the left, along with a path of dalliance with issues of race, gender and sexuality of which the Monica Lewinsky affair was the most intoxicating example.

In Hitchen's expanded paperback edition of "No One Left to Lie to: The Politics of America's Worst Family" (to be released in July 2000), his slow motion citizen's cardiac arrest of the Clinton presidency, he looks at Clintons baleful influence on the 2000 election, Hillary Clinton's run for the New York Senate seat, and how the net of corruption in Democratic fundraising is cast far and wide.