[In the following excerpt, Hames commends No One Left to Lie To for its “uncompromising” approach, but notes shortcomings in Hitchens's “exaggerated” argument.]

Lord knows what future historians will make of the Year of Monica. Whatever conclusions they reach may inevitably be shaped by their wider perspectives on the Clinton presidency, and what might by then have become established trends in American social life. It may be that they will come to view the whole story as a bizarre form of witch-hunt, precisely the form of contemporary Salem that Arthur Miller, Arthur Schlesinger Jr and numerous other defenders of the President have postulated. If so, it will be argued that this extraordinary incident was simply a melodramatic reflection of a society torn between coming economic modernity and doomed moral certainty; a 1990s version of the 1925 trial in which John Scopes was condemned by his peers (but cheered by elites) for his willingness to teach the theory of evolution in a Tennessee school.

It is, however, equally likely that a very different conclusion will be reached. Once the economic miracle that has coincided with the Clinton years (but which has been inspired by his Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board) has been placed in context, commentators may determine that ethical and political corruption were at the root of the Bill Clinton phenomenon. The Lewinsky saga will thus be seen as a small but significant window on this President's essentially malignant soul.

Christopher Hitchens and Michael Isikoff are both players of note in the events surrounding the affair themselves, and also articulate commentators on them. Isikoff was the first main-stream journalist to uncover the relationship between the President and his former intern, even if his employers at the Washington Post and then Newsweek did their best to undermine his efforts. Hitchens played a cameo role right at the end of the Senate impeachment saga. He revealed that Sidney Blumenthal, the White House official who would remain loyal to Mr Clinton even if it could be proved that the former Arkansas Governor assassinated President Kennedy, had characterized Ms Lewinsky as a “stalker,” precisely the opposite of what he told Kenneth Starr's Grand Jury that he said. Hitchens's willingness to turn in his old friend has earned him the unstinting hatred of almost the entire Washington press corps.

The two authors therefore have an interest in historians indicting rather than acquitting this President. In No One Left to Lie To, Hitchens admits this cheerfully from the start, and then lays out, in characteristically robust fashion, a first draft of the charge sheet which he hopes those historians will take forward. …

It is difficult to describe Hitchens's book as anything other than uncompromising. Our man on the East Coast takes every opportunity to place the Lewinsky storm in a wider and more sinister context. The President is portrayed as a man who has acquired public office as part of a sordid pact with numerous dubious hustlers and fixers who have financed his electoral expeditions. The Clinton era has witnessed the shredding of traditional liberal principles at home and the pursuit of an amoral foreign policy abroad, symbolized by high-tech bombings of politically convenient targets at personally convenient times.

This combination of ideological betrayal with what Hitchens calls “war crimes” should properly be seen for what it is—abuse of power—and the political system, if it had a shred of decency, would have dismissed Clinton from the White House for it. As it is, the President will escape to enjoy a playboy retirement while the poor and the weak at home and overseas pay the political price for his misdemeanours. Clinton is portrayed as Richard Nixon without the redeeming sense of mission.

Strong stuff. And not an especially popular message either. Most reviews of this book have been less than sympathetic. This collection of essays and recollections is, after all, at 113 short pages, hardly a book at all, but more of a personal memoir-cum-slightly paranoid diatribe. There are phrases, such as “war crimes,” deployed in such a sweeping fashion that they do more damage to Hitchens than Clinton. And yet there is an underlying message, a paradox, that deserves serious consideration. Although all those who eventually voted to impeach Clinton at the end of his Senate trial were conservatives and Republicans, should it not be liberals and Democrats who come to rue the day that he was ever elected? …

One suspects that a lot more details of this kind will emerge once the President has departed from Washington. They might well serve to reinforce the argument, made in such an admittedly exaggerated form by Christopher Hitchens, that the sins of the Clinton Presidency should be properly regarded as a matter for liberal rather than conservative outrage. Whether the historians will eventually agree is another matter.