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Rating: 
Summary: Not the Fluff Cycle
Review: Being a fan of President Clinton I always read a book on his administration with a bit of a bias view. At times this book upset me and other times I was shouting "right on", given these duel responses I have come to the conclusion that, no matter that I did not agree with a number of items, the book is an overall fair look at the Clinton scandal fest. I thought the author did a great job in weaving together the pertinent facts about each of the scandals / issues with the response from the White House. I was very interested in the inside info on how the White House tried to either spin or deflect each of the stories. The author had a great deal of direct quotes of conversations, which really made the book come alive. The information about the White House briefing is worth the price of the book alone. You can actually see this type of activity at work today with the current briefings that are televised. I also was interested in the additional comments on the way that the Clinton's themselves viewed the media and their knee jerk reaction to clam up at every question. You almost got the feeling that if the Clinton's would have always listened to the media people on their staffs that some of the overall negative and nasty press they received may have been decreased to some degree. The last bit of the book that surprised me was the, at times, rude, disrespectful and almost violent way the media and the White House staff dealt with each other. You just got to wonder what the White House staff was thinking to beat up on the people with the loudest voice in the country. My only complaint was that the book ended too soon, missing the Super Bowl of the spin, the Starr Report and the impeachment. It would have been nice for the author to have held out a year or so for the full story in the paperback. Overall I found this book well written, very interesting and quite enjoyable. It is required reading for anyone that is interested in the Clinton years or the media.
Rating:
Summary: THE book on modern Presidental PR
Review: Howard Kurtz, a sage media critic for the Washington Post, has crafted the modern masterpiece on how the spin game is played in Washington. As we all know, political success comes from developing a carefully constructed image, fed to the American public via the mass media. The staff in the President's press office work dilligently to dominate the news cycle and to present the calculated images and soundbytes that will help increase the President's public opinion numbers. Kurtz could not have found a better case study, as Clinton's press staff (led by the brilliant Mike McCurry) help the boss survive one scandal and damaging revelation after another, from Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones to Monica Lewinsky and Impeachment. Ever wonder how Clinton survived those eight years intact? Read this book and it will all make sense. This book will soon be a must-read in both history and political science, where it will help future generations understand the Presidency, c. 2000.
Rating: 
Summary: and this was just the dress rehearsal (so to speak)
Review: The presidential flacks had done their job. For 1997, at least, their spin had carried the day.
-Howard Kurtz, Spin Cycle In a story that is utterly devoid of edifying moments and chock full of quite depressing ones, these
final lines of the book are the most shocking. For it is only as you read them that the full realization
hits home that Howard Kurtz's justifiably jaded and cynical look at the way the Clinton administration
manipulated the press and the public in order to cover up or blunt scandal was written before the
Lewinsky scandal broke. Commingled with the shock though is the sudden comprehension that the
Clinton Administration was uniquely well prepared to deal with such a scandal, having spent the prior
seven years honing their obfuscatory skills on a whole series of equally disturbing and potentially
damaging scandals. In fact, as Kurtz notes in a hastily tacked on Epilogue, one that subsequent events were to wholly
outpace, in the deposition that Bill Clinton gave in the Jones case, on the weekend that Matt Drudge
broke the Monica story, he revealed that he had in fact had sex with Gennifer Flowers. In other
words, on the very first occasion that most Americans saw Clinton, the infamous Super Bowl night 60
Minutes appearance, he lied to us all, with Hillary at his side, and it worked. What Howard Kurtz really ends up detailing for us is just the long dress rehearsal before the big show,
in which the Clintons and their spin machine worked out all the kinks in their act. By the time the
Lewinsky scandal broke, they understood that all they had to do was deny initially, demonize liberally
(both accusers and investigators), leak pre-emptively, and acknowledge belatedly and they would be
able to so desensitize the press and the people that Bill Clinton would ultimately survive. And so, as
the tawdry mess reached its foreordained conclusion, we had the hitherto unimaginable situation of a
credible rape charge (by Juanita Broaddrick) against the President of the United States, which he did
not even deny, but which the press chose not to hound him with. He had finally just beaten them
down to the point where they didn't have the heart to pursue another scandal. Then, in a moment which nearly redeems him, Clinton left office in a blizzard of bartered pardons and
other final acts of contempt for the staffers, supporters, and voters who had excused everything he'd
ever done. It was the final (...) gesture of a man who clearly understood that he had so implicated a
nation in his treachery that he had become untouchable. To judge Bill Clinton at that late date would
have required people to face all of the excuses and allowances that they'd made for him in the
preceding eight years, and that was not going to happen. It was all just so brazen that it was hard not
to admire the in-your-face flourish with which he departed. Howard Kurtz does a fine job of charting
the early years of the Clinton scandals, but there was so much more yet to come. GRADE : B+
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