"The Hunting of the President"


Disjointed, surprisingly amateurish-looking, but chilling nonetheless

"The Hunting of the President" is a documentary about the actual "vast right wing conspiracy" that was determined to hound the Clintons and destroy President Clinton's presidency. The documentary reminds us of the scandals, from WhiteWater to TrooperGate to commodites trading. From Gennifer Flowers to Paula Jones to Monica Lewinsky. From Vince Foster to the McDougalls. And it connects the dots behind the scenes. Who was financing some of the "journalistic" efforts to uncover these stories? The same guy supporting the troopers, the same "team" informing to the FBI and so on and so on.

It is co-directed and produced by Harry Thomason, an Arkansan who went on to become a big Hollywood producer of such Southern-flavored shows as "Designing Women" and "Evening Shade." Thomason also had a hand in Clinton's famous "A Place Called Hope" campaign video and in Wes Clark's very affecting campaign video as well.

With that kind of pedigree I have to say I was distracted by how non-slick this documentary is. First of all it's visually schlocky. One of my viewing companions in particular pointed out the fonts chosen for the various transitional caption screens. Ugly...practically Times New Roman ugly!

And the throughline of the narrative is pretty herky-jerky. It hops around. I mean I know there are a lot of things to cover, so maybe they either should have filtered a bit, or perhaps chosen to go purely chronological or perhaps added some graphic representations of the rippling outward of the conspiracy.

And the intercutting of stock footage to "represent" certain terms in the narration was just visually distracting and mentally jarring. And struck me as somewhat immature for some reason.

But you will walk away newly disappointed that this country spent so much public time and money on what was essentially a private vendetta.

And that in the end the one thing we got was a confirmed blow job.

The most powerful part of this movie was the extended interview with Susan McDougall. This is a woman
who spent two years in jail, rather than tell a lie. And she is the Everyman character. The one who thought, "This can't happen to me." The one who should remind us that things like the Patriot Act can never just impinge on the rights of "others." We are all at risk when one of us is at risk.

This woman was persecuted, and she can never be repaid for not only the years lost in her life, but for the crushing of her and our belief in the inherent fairness of our system.

Posted: Mon - July 19, 2004 at 09:46 AM       EmailFeedback

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