E-Mail This Article to a Friend THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT

I still have no idea what Whitewater was all about, and perhaps that’s the point of this tendentious and depressing account of the trumped-up legal woes and sex scandals of the Clinton administration. No doubt the investigation was, as one talking head in the film puts it, five years and $50 million expended over nothing, but in their earnest (with a few unfortunate lapses into Michael Moore–like levity) documentary, which is subtitled The Ten Year Campaign To Destroy Bill Clinton, filmmakers Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry might have built a stronger case had they tapped credible points of view not obviously in the Clinton camp (the interviewees include James Carville, Sidney Blumenthal, and Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, the pair who wrote the book on which the film is based). Instead, we get self-incriminating, ruefully funny interviews with some of the lowlifes whose fanaticism and venality fed what Hillary Clinton famously described as a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to impeach an elected president. Mocked at the time, her seeming paranoia looks pretty reasonable in light of the interlinked backgrounds and agendas of those depicted here. All Whitewater under the bridge? Unfortunately not, as the current presidential campaign attests. Although not the most cogent in the recent spate of left-leaning documentaries, The Hunting of the President provides a needed reminder of an outrage eclipsed by greater outrages to come. (89 minutes)