As far as Hitchens is concerned, to take Jones, Broaddrick or Willey at anything less than face value, to question their motives in any way, is tantamount to a smear. Thus, we can assume that he would consider even proof of Willey's past duplicity -- such as Time magazine's report that she had lied about being pregnant in order to punish the younger soccer coach who had broken off with her -- an unspeakably low tactic. Willey first denied that story to the Office of the Independent Counsel; she admitted to it only when the OIC told her it had independent confirmation and reminded her that she had been given immunity. Yet Hitchens considers it perfectly legitimate to print a rumor that Clinton was having "a liaison" with one of the contributors who stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom, though he offers no evidence -- let alone proof.

Invective has always been one of Hitchens' finest talents. But in "No One Left to Lie To," his invective is joined, more often than not, to the telltale sign of the bluenose: the barely concealed excitement over what disgusts him. Dick Morris, in particular, pushes Hitchens to heights of repelled oratory ("wasting his substance ... with harlots and high living") that seem more appropriate to Victorian potboilers:

He and Mr. Clinton shared some pretty foul evenings together, bloating and sating themselves at public expense while consigning the poor and defenseless to yet more misery. The kinds of grossness and greed in which they indulged are perfectly cognate with one another -- selfish and fleshy and hypocritical and exploitive. "The Monster," Morris called Clinton when in private congress with his whore. "The Creep," she called Morris when she could get away and have a decent bath.

It's easy to forget, while wallowing through passages like that, that there is a thesis to this book. Its essence can be found in the subtitle "The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton," and it boils down, more or less, to the notion that Clinton has courted the left with his stated intentions while appeasing the right with his actions. And the damnable thing about "No One Left to Lie To" is that had Hitchens focused on that argument, he might have produced a very compelling and very damaging book. Early on during the 1996 presidential campaign, when it had become evident that leftists were willing to accept policy decisions from Clinton that they would have condemned from a right-winger, I decided that I couldn't support his reelection. The callous Welfare Reform Act (a name that disguised its true intentions); the (similarly misnamed) Defense of Marriage Act, with its craven middle-of-the-night signing; the First Amendment-trashing Communications Decency Act -- those were pieces of legislation that might have been expected of the far right. And when I expressed that opinion to liberal friends, they told me darkly that failing to vote for Clinton was risking a Dole victory. But the liberals I knew simply refused to acknowledge that a significant number of Clinton's policies were anathema to their beliefs.

Those policies -- which may have delivered the final blow to old-style Democratic liberalism and at any rate gave rise to the disguised, often rigid, conservatism of what has come to be characterized as "centrist" positions -- could have been the basis for a book about America's turn to the right. Certainly Hitchens recalls some episodes that bring nothing but shame upon Clinton, that make him look just as calculating and slimy as Hitchens claims he is. Perhaps the worst was Clinton's return to Arkansas during the 1992 presidential campaign to oversee the execution of a mentally handicapped death-row prisoner named Rickey Ray Rector. The execution went horribly wrong, with Rector's arm finally being slashed to insert a catheter when a vein for the lethal injection could not be found. (Rector was clearly unable to comprehend what was happening -- thinking that his executioners were doctors coming to his aid, he attempted to assist them.) And it's not particularly difficult to conclude that, taking place as it did during the New Hampshire primary, this execution was Clinton's preemptive strike against charges of being soft on crime -- that he was damned if anyone was going to catch him off guard by asking what he'd do if Hillary were raped and murdered.

At moments like this, Hitchens is once again the writer who has such a talent for marshaling exactly the facts people don't want to hear -- a talent he has taken a lot of flak for even when he's been on solid ground. I know of no better way to startle people than to give them Hitchens' brilliant polemic "The Missionary Position," which should have laid the myth of Mother Teresa's saintliness to rest once and for all.

But in "No One Left to Lie To," Hitchens almost always overplays his hand, coloring in decisions that are incompetent or mendacious or just plain wrong with hints of dark and covert deeds. In the case of the disastrous August 1998 bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, we are told that Clinton was appeasing Southern Christians who were lobbying Congress to prohibit business with countries that discriminate against Christians. At other times Hitchens writes with the outraged disgust of someone just discovering that politics, much like journalism, is an incredibly dirty business that brings you into contact with all sorts of disreputable people.

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