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The Final Days:
The Last Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House,
by Barbara Olson


(Click for Amazon book review)

You can tell a lot about a book from its cover. Barbara Olson's previous book, Hell To Pay has an absolutely awful picture of Hillary Clinton on the cover; and the book's content paints an absolutely awful picture of Hillary Clinton. This book has a much nicer picture on the cover, of a smiling Bill & Hillary waving good-bye, and it paints a much nicer picture of them than Olson's first book.

Olson published Hell To Pay in 1999, as an attack on Hillary as she ran for Senate. Olson published The Final Days in 2001, after Hillary was elected to the Senate and after the Clintons had left the White House. Hence it can be seen as an attack on Hillary as she prepared to run for president (which at that time, seemed a possibility for 2004).

The book focuses, as its title indicates, on the Clintons' final days in the White House, and on what Olson views as the Clintons' abuse of power in their final months. The key period is the weeks after Gore conceded the 2000 election and before the inauguration, when the Clintons knew they would be preparing for a Bush presidency. The abuses in that brief period are well-known now: from numerous pardons, including some to campaign donors; to the Clintons' claiming some White House furniture as personal rather than state-owned. Several of the "abuses" claimed by Olson went beyond politics and into policy: from a last-minute change in the EPA definition of allowed arsenic levels; to making the United State a signatory to the International Criminal Court.

The reason this book paints a nicer picture than Hell To Pay is because it moves beyond politics to policy. In that regard, it's a detailed description of what Clinton did, mostly by Executive Order, in anticipation of four years of a Bush presidency undoing Clinton's 8-year legacy. Certainly environmentalists would consider the arsenic rule a major victory -- not an abuse of power by any means. And internationalists will forever applaud signing on to the International Criminal Court as a major means of restricting Pres. Bush's near-solipsistic anti-internationalism.

We review this book now because Hillary has just become Secretary of State. But the book focuses equally on Bill -- and of course all the policy "abuses" are attributable to Bill, since his signature is on the Executive Orders, even though Hillary had some influence. While the TARGET of the book's attack is Hillary, because she was running for president, the FOCUS of the book is Bill, because he was the president. Summarizing that focus in the opening chapter:

There's one additional historical note about this book: Barbara Olson was killed on 9/11/2001. Olson's family decided to publish the book posthumously. Hence this book is the final say from a well-known conservative journalist about the Clintons. The Publisher's Note at the opening of the book provides details:

-- Jesse Gordon, jesse@OnTheIssues.org, Feb. 2009