Hitch really hated the Clintons. ( )

No One Left to Lie To is Christopher Hitchens' unapologetic and still-timely diagnosis of the Clinton infection. Written in the immediate aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky scandal – Hitchens even notes how some of the manuscript was written whilst he was testifying in one of Bill Clinton's many hearings – some parts of the exposé show their age by taking for granted knowledge of the ins and outs of Clinton-camp duplicitousness at the time. It would no doubt have been known at the time as it led on every network and newspaper and around every water cooler, but seventeen years on parts of the book can seem overly journalistic. However, whilst Hitchens wasn't looking for posterity here, the quality of his writing – particularly in the more focused later chapters – ensures that the book can still be devoured many years on.

This is not the only reason why this short polemic has aged well. Another is that Clinton has not been called to account for his alleged crimes and misdemeanours, so lucid documentation of them is still in the public interest. Later chapters like those on 'Clinton's War Crimes' and 'Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?' consequently still possess the power to shock. Hitchens' attempt to explain the strategy of 'triangulation' and how it enabled Clinton to exercise power with such reckless lack of principle is less coherent – the earlier chapters could have done with some restructuring – but the assessment of Clintonism as, variously, "the manipulation of populism by elitism" (pg. 2), "the use of public office for private ends and gratification" (pg. 91) and, most concisely, "the transmutation of public office into private interest and vice versa" (pp163-4) are on the mark. Underlying all of Hitchens' righteous venom is a lament for the corruption of classical liberalism and republicanism. When he rails against the soulless cynicism of the Clintons, the partisan politicking of the public 'servants', the unquestioning complicity or witlessness of the media and the bovine ignorance of the citizenry, he is diagnosing sicknesses and symptoms which will be familiar to any observer of American politics now in 2017.

This leads me to the final reason why No One Left to Lie To retains its relevancy, for (as you might have heard) last year the mutant Clinton monster once again reared its head for another run at the presidency. Even after the loss (which was a joy to see unfold live), the Clinton epidemic is still in the air, in the refusal to accept defeat graciously amongst her fanbase. It is interesting to speculate what Hitchens might have thought of the 2016 presidential race and of everything that has happened since. Certainly, with Benghazi, the e-mail server, the health problems and fainting on that "beautiful day in New York", and the recent Seth Rich allegations, he wouldn't have been short of material. (With regards to the Seth Rich story and the Washington Post instead running with more Russia allegations, it is coincidentally interesting to note this passage on page xxxv of Hitchens' book: "I. F. Stone once observed that the Washington Post was a great newspaper, because you never knew on what page you would find the Page One story.")

No One Left to Lie To is a troubling book. It is dripping with evidence if not of criminality then at least with the darkest seediness. The pages themselves feel almost soiled. And if you feel that the flies hanging around Bill Clinton are now old-hat, the book also devotes some time to dear Hillary (Chapter 7: 'The Shadow of the Con Man'), who sadly has gone on to prove that if there is indeed no one left to lie to, you can at least continue to lie with impunity to your existing audience, again and again and again. One can't but help the feeling that for all the angst over Trump, America dodged a bullet last November.

I once read an opinion which suggested that, faced with a President Trump, Hitchens would have "held his nose and voted Hillary". This is impossible to know, of course, but I think such an assessment doesn't quite understand the depth of distaste Hitchens – that lover of Jefferson and Paine and the truly liberal values of the American Republic – had for soulless parasites like the Clintons and their corporate-like machine. He might well have preferred the blunt demagoguery and brash yet gifted amateurism of Trump – which holds the prospect of change even if not change you could believe in – over the self-serving cynicism and short-circuiting of real democracy epitomized by the Clinton brand. Of course, it is very difficult to imagine Hitchens voting for someone as artless as Trump, but then again there remain many floundering commentators who still lack the wit to conceive that anyone might vote Trump. It is a moot point, although the speculation does remind us what a powerful guiding voice and unflappable bullshit-detector we have lost in Hitchens. Above all, I would suggest that the champion of Enlightenment values and writer of Letters to a Young Contrarian might himself remind us to look to our own lights and not vote based on his own advocacy or otherwise. For myself, I would suggest that perhaps, in this unusual case, the right course is better the devil you don't know, particularly when the one you do know has shown such immunity to banishment. ( )

The paperback edition, subtitled "the values of the worst family", has an additional chapter, and deals more with Hillary, and also deals more Bill Clinton's tendency towards sexual assault (and Hillary's complicity in it). It's an attack, a justified attack, on Clinton from the Left. Once you understand the man, and his wife, you might just wonder why liberals have such a hard on for these illiberal self serving monsters. ( )

While a lot of the evidences put forth by Hitchens in this short expose did seem somewhat circumstantial, chapters 5 (Clinton's War Crimes) and 6 (Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?) completely made up for the logical stretches and correlations made early on in the book.

The corroborating accounts of specific cruelties endured, each made by women who had no possible knowledge of each other's experiences and had nothing whatsoever to gain from lying,
makes it a near certainty that Clinton was indeed a big ole bag of dicks, and most probably a rapist on at least a few occasions.

However, the credibility of this book would've benefited from a writing style less inflammatory than Hitchens' usual style. It wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable a read if he had chosen a more straightforward approach though. I've always thought of his writing as somewhat masturbatory, which obviously makes it a great deal of fun when you agree with him. ( )

Hitchens, ever the iconoclast, lays into Bill Clinton with the ferocity of Mike Tyson in his 1980s prime. Actually, that’s unfair – it’s more like the considered, thorough pasting Lennox Lewis doled out which confirmed Tyson as a thoroughly spent force.

Clinton, like Obama, rode to power by tapping into an electoral reservoir of hope, of a need for change after more than a decade of a Republican government. Hitchens paints his electoral tactics there as dirty and thoroughly cynical. He covers the obvious Lewinsky affair but finds it part of a pattern rather than a one off. His time in the Oval Office is portrayed as being dedicated to self-enrichment at the expense of the little people who elected him and ultimately a betrayal of the hopes he was elected on. It often comes across that Hitchens’ ire is down to the waste of a chance for genuine change, instead entrenching the neoliberal consensus established by Reagan and Bush. Essentially Clinton’s version of politics is seen as bleak, based on a cynical exploitation of hope, dreams and the better side of human nature. As with so much of Hitchens it’s an enlightening read which runs counter to the more sanitised version of history, though it’s only one side of the story. ( )