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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: 20th Century Fox
Salesrank: 34747
Released: September 28, 2004 |
| Our Price: $2.43 |
| Used Price: $1.48 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The Hunting of the President is the story of a sustained and well-funded effort to discredit and defeat Bill Clinton, dating from his gubernatorial days in Arkansas and eventually leading to his impeachment trial. The film also acknowledges that Clinton?s reckless behavior, along with the ?panicky, defensive, and occasionally less-than-perfectly honest? responses from the White House press office, didn?t hurt his opponents. Investigative journalism at its juiciest, The Hunting of the President is a surprising valediction to a far-from-angelic public leader who often outmaneuvered his enemies with otherworldly skill.
Description of The Hunting of the President:
The Hunting of the President, a documentary examining the Republican campaign to discredit Bill Clinton's presidency, unfolds like a paranoid thriller--made all the more astonishing by scrupulous documentation and an impressive breadth of interviews with journalists, lawyers, political analysts, judges, newspaper editors, and many of the people caught up in the Whitewater scandal--which, after an expense of many millions of dollars and several years of investigation, failed to find any criminal act. The relentless efforts of Clinton's enemies grow into an appalling abuse of power, ultimately resulting in his impeachment (but not his removal from office). This documentary, like those of Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11), uses brief clips from Hollywood movies and television to give a boost to the narrative; this could seem cloying, but The Hunting of the President presents such an impressive barrage of facts and perspectives that it earns some moments of flippancy. --Bret Fetzer
The Hunting of the President Reviews:
The Hand-to-Hand Combat of Poltics Explained 
2009-12-15 - If you are looking for an uplifting story of the human condition and character, this may put you into a depression, as it describes how both can sink far below the crush depth of common decency. This story describes the abyss of vindictiveness, meaness, chicanery, and manipulation. It is a reminder that politics is not just mean or ugly, but brutal, and it can be brutal even when the stakes are inconsequential and petty.
So it was in Arkansas, when Larry Case, a private investigator attempted to gain anything on Governor Bill Clinton to be used against him. Larry Nichols, an employee fired by the governor, wanted it to get even. Larry Case didn't care if what he found was real or phony, but he did find a jingle singer, Jennifer Flowers who could embarrass the governor. Two piqued Arkansas State Troopers decided to give up the governor's dalliances after he failed to deliver on jobs he promised them after his presidential election. Another flower would come out of the woodwork to claim a sexual harassment suit against the President. Her name is Paula Jones. With an IQ resembling a bra size, she is egged on by three attorneys who are working on this unbeknownst to their law firms. The elves, as they are called, Ann Coulter, George Connery, and Jerome Marcus, persuade Jones that a settlement of $700,000 is not enough without an apology, and the Supreme Court, for the first time, gives the okay to depose a sitting President of the United States in a civil matter. She gets rid of kinder, gentler attorneys, Gill Davis and Joe Canumarata. The trap is set to get Bill Clinton under oath where he might make a false statement that can then be turned into a criminal matter. That would involve high crimes and misdemeanors and impeachment. For the first time in our history, impeachment is used not to punish wrongdoing, but as a politcal weapon.
In the meantime, the Rutherford Institute and Jerry Falwell, a man of the cloth is also a man of the Holy DVD. He promotes scripture in the form of "Citizens for Honest Government," which accuses Clinton of being a drug smuggler, embezzler and murderer. It is narrated by--Larry Nichols. (In Jesus' name, we pray)!
This story goes into a second part, called the Arkansas Project which is engineered by archconservative, Richard Mellon Scaife, who bankrolls a full-time, all-out smear campaign against the Clintons. This is Whitewater. It will involve David Hale, a lawyer, judge, and sleaze lending-meister who is indicted in September 1993 and is sentenced to 28 months in jail. Willing to do anything to get less time, he claims that his shady dealmaking involved Bill Clinton. A former Reagan appointee, Ed Olsen unsuccessfully attempts to tie the Clintons to Hale's illegal mischief. Robert Fisk is appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Clinton's financial past. He is not only the President of the American Bar Association, but is one of the most respected attorneys in the country. When it looks like Fisk is going to exonerate the Clintons of any wrongdoing, he is replaced by Ken Starr a Republican hack appointed by a three-judge panel of Jesse Helms appointees. (Helms hates Clinton from his viscera). Ken Starr is also a former Solicitor General who lost his job, thanks to--Bill Clinton. Starr will go after failed banker Jim McDougall who is willing to make any kind of deal to stay out of jail. He is willing to say that the Clintons were involved in shady loan receiving. There is only one problem. His wife, Susan is unwilling to go along. The independent investigators make it clear that she will go to jail unless she gives them a "proffer" against Bill Clinton. She refuses. Not only does she end up in jail, but she is given a red jumpsuit to wear, which indicates that she is a child killer. This puts her near the bottom of the inmate food chain. She will also be accused of being Bill Clinton's lover.
William Jefferson Clinton will be charged with two counts of high crimes and misdemeanors. He will be tried and found not guilty by the Senate, thus infuriating even more those who were out to get him.
The so-called liberal press are sent to Little Rock, to be taken in by hayseed locals, known for lies and scams, who provide monumental exaggerations about Clinton. Those that investigate their information and find it questionable are told by their editors to come back with something on the Clintons. The news that Bill Clinton had nothing to do with Whitewater, receives barely a mention in the media.
With Morgan Freeman's superb narration, and a story so, literally unfathomable, you cannot help watching this with a morbid curiosity for not just how it could happen, but the depths to what people will do for slights real or imagined, or because they just didn't like someone's political party or election. It revealed how stunning politics can be for things so devoid of issues, ideology, or justice. It is not hard to see Susan McDougall as a forerunner of Jose Padilla. Having already thought Ann Coulter was one of the most miserable excuses for a human being and a possible sociopath, I was surprised that I still had room to lower her even more, as well as Ken Starr. I am now convinced that both are certifiable sociopaths.
This is the kind of story you watch, and almost hold your breath until it is over. I strongly recommend you see this after the Christmas season.
In the meantime, peace on earth and goodwill to all men.
Follow-up:
Paula Jones ends up with just $200,000 and her husband divorces her. She sports a nosejob and debases herself by posing nude in Penthouse and going on Fox's Celebrity Boxing where former Olympic iceskater, Tanya Harding cleans her clock. She will complain on a TV talk show that she was used by Clinton and the Republicans while "Ann Coulter's done books."
Jim McDougall dies in prison.
A number of Republican politicians appointed to investigate Clinton's affairs will discover that female skeletons will be found in their own closets of infidelity.
Unable to prove anything after an investigation that costs the government approximately $40,000,000, Senator Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY) announces that even though there was not one indictment, that "something stinks."
Ken Starr says that he is willing to talk things over with Susan McDougall, over lunch. She is still waiting for his phone call.
Stunning reminiscence of a stupid period (oh, and an attempted coup d'etat) 
2008-12-27 - Elected in 1992, Bill Clinton was a target of the right from the moment the news of his election was announced. "The Hunting of the President" describes a smear attack on Clinton by a gaggle of an unlikely Arkansas lowlife characters that ballooned into Ken Starr's $50 million "investigation" that led to Clinton's impeachment.
What is so stunning about the film is that Clinton was nearly done in by some of the lamest and strangest folks in the land. To see Paula Jones absolutely exulting in the attention she was receiving says a lot about the motivation behind her charges. Interviews with many of the principal actors - Paul Begala, James Carville, Susan McDougall, Jerry Falwell and others -- brings a level of depth that the media of the time didn't come near. In fact, that the media allow this lame circus to continue --and that our elected representatives piled on without constitutional backing to bring down a duly elected US President -- is dispiriting and enraging. Serious journalists who investigated the charges on their own knew there was no wrongdoing involved in Whitewater, Troopergate and all the other "gates" that became the hallmark of the Clinton administration. But the public, convinced of Clinton's weaknesses, ate up every whisper and innuendo fed to it by a self-interested media, and lost its collective mind -- unaware and evidently uncaring that ensnaring a President in an ongoing soap opera might not be in the public interest.
I disagree with other reviewers who loved the extra showing Bill Clinton speaking for 43 minutes after the film's premiere showing. Good Lord, the man could drone on! But frankly, I don't care that he portrays himself as a hapless victim of his political enemies, and I pin some of this mess on him. Clinton's sin was less his indiscretion with "that woman, Miss Lewinsky," than in his inability to shut down the small time, small-minded super-partisan attacks that paralyzed the nation. "The Hunting of the President" showed me how insignificant and easily deflected was Clinton's opposition. Between the troopers' self-interested pique and Ken Starr's partisan sanctimony, there were many, many stories the media and public could have followed. A weakness of the film is that it doesn't delve much into the context that allowed the lunatic right to define the story. It would have been helpful, for instance, to describe how the expansion of the cable news channels allowed more and more beautiful-yet-brainless journalists keep the 24-hour news spotlight focused on Clinton's supposed "corruption."
Though "The Hunting of the President" made me want to read the book, the images of the participants was priceless. Watching serial-liar Jerry Falwell unctuously distance himself from the notorious "Clinton Chronicles" -- a mendacity-packed video promoted and disseminated by his own Moral Majority -- because he never *personally* claimed that Clinton was a drug-dealer and murderer is to see where the true corruption of the Clinton era lay, and was worth the price of the film. Best of all was realizing (a bit late to be sure) that the unsung hero of the story was Susan McDougall, who withstood enormous pressures and accepted jail time rather than to lie about the Clintons. A major beef with the film was its inter-cutting footage of the participants with humorous clips from old films. An attempted coup on our own soil could have used a framework of outrage, not cuteness.
Anyway, "The Hunting of the President" succeeded in spite of its shortcomings by putting the mugs and mugging of the participants on film for all to see.
I still buy this film to pass along to others
2008-03-16 - If you like the Clinton's, you'll love this film. If you hate them, it won't change your mind. My life was at it's best during the Clinton/Gore administration. I think the nation was at a high point, too. With this in mind it amazed me to see the venom spewed forth in their direction by supposedly rational human beings. I now understand it because I have the same knee jerk reaction to the current administration. I guess when you hate something you can't help it.
Watch the film, it says what needs to be said but more importantly, watch the bonus material with Clinton speaking before a group at the premier screening. I felt that it is a shame that he had to administer a country that didn't appreciate him, when he could have been the best poli-sci professor in the history of the universe....sigh....bg
The Press and Clinton
2008-02-03 - "The Hunting of the President"
The Press and Clinton
Amos Lassen
Being shown on Here! TV in February is "The Hunting of the President" which is an indictment of the way William Jefferson Clinton was treated by the press. It chronicles the right wing beyond reason attempt to oust the President during his period in office. Using insights into the anti-Clinton groups, it is a historical retrospective that pulls together those elements that worked together to unseat the President.
This film goes back over the Paula Jones mess and then moves along to Whitewater and then to Ken Starr and Monica Lewinsky. It attempts to explain what all of the anti-Clinton business was all about. We finally get to see some of the personalities we only heard about. These include native Arkansans, White Supremacists and members of the Arkansas project. Susan McDougal (Joan of the Ozarks) was brutalized during this period but comes out of the film looking like a hero. The details of her treatment by Starr are shocking.
The film is very much like a research paper--each statement was backed up by facts and Morgan Freeman narrates the movie with dignity.
Beginning in 1990 when Clinton was governor of Arkansas through 1992 and his ascendancy to the Presidency and then to 2000 when the investigations were almost over, we get a picture of how the media tried to destroy Bill Clinton. The focus is clear and the interviews are incisive. We see back room deals and political positioning--things that happen when two political institutions vie for both public attention and power. This is a serious study of the intent to slander the President of the United States.
Well made
2008-01-11 - I have watched this over & over it's good. The best part though is the speech by Bill Clinton found in the extras.
