Many contemporary broadcast and print commentators regard politics as an elaborate game. Such pundits gave high marks to the former Arkansas governor, a Democrat, when he turned to Republican David Gergen early in his presidency. The generally liberal press hailed Clinton's astuteness in choosing the GOP political mechanic. Many conservatives reacted with fury at what they perceived as Gergen's betrayal in accepting the president's call to service.

A dissenter among the conservatives was Paul Weyrich, for whom I worked throughout the 1980s. Weyrich accurately predicted that Gergen would help Clinton rebuild credibility, writing that "amidst the pygmies in the Clinton White House" Gergen "is truly a giant. Some have called him a traitor for taking the job. In fact, his views have been consistent since the Reagan administration. He is a raging moderate." Weyrich called Gergen's selection "both brilliant and dangerous.… (B)rilliant because Gergen is someone who, if Clinton follows his advice, can shape up the Clinton presidency.… It is dangerous… because I believe (Clinton) lies as a matter of course.… Now all presidents lie and Gergen has… seen his share of presidential fibbing up close. But Clinton is a big time liar, so much so I doubt he even knows when he is telling the truth.… (W)hen (Gergen) is asked to lie himself on a mater of significance, I believe he has enough integrity to resign." Whether or not his judgement proves correct about David Gergen, after one year there remains no doubt that Weyrich's assessment of Clinton is on the mark.

President Clinton has audacious disregard for truth, and for his own past rhetoric. In July 1993, in a speech at Fort McNair, President Clinton claimed the first time he had ever considered the military's policy on homosexuals was after an October 1991 Harvard Speech: "I was asked by one of the students what I thought of… lifting the ban. This question had never been presented to me and I never had the opportunity to discuss it with anyone."

A newspaper called Bay Windows in September 1991 reported "Clinton… told reporters and a key member of Congress that he opposes the Pentagon's ban on gay and lesbian service personnel." Clinton belittled the military's policy in an early 1992 Associated Press interview. Later, in a speech to Hollywood activists, he denigrated it as "quaint little rules."

Politicians often dissemble, fudge or change their minds. (A notable pre-Clinton example of this was George Bush's disastrous switch of his 1988 "no new taxes" pledge.) But Bill Clinton is in a class by himself. Leaving aside the private affairs and his military record, there is enough evidence on public issues to merit taking everything he says with a grain of salt.

Candidate Clinton decried the deficit, promising "a choice between a children's tax credit or a significant reduction in… income tax rate" for the middle class. As president he changed: "We just have to face the fact that to make the changes our country needs, more Americans must contribute today."

Candidate Clinton promised to slice the deficit to zero, though at times the promise was to trim it by half. But President Clinton signed an economic plan that will, under the most optimistic scenarios, cut the deficit by only 11 percent.

President Clinton had a unique opportunity to tackle entitlements and other spending programs which drain economic vitality. Instead, he raised taxes on workers and employers, violating promises he made to watch out for the middle class. As details of his tax plan emerged in the spring of 1993, opposition solidified.

Candidate Clinton opposed federal excise gas tax hikes, but President Clinton lobbied aggressively for increases. Americans of $20,000-plus annual income—truck drivers, for example—discovered that in Bill Clinton's America, they are "the rich."

Candidate Clinton favored a line-item veto, but as president settled for "enhanced recision authority." (U.S. Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Oklahoma City, called it "line-item voodoo.")

Candidate Clinton denounced the Reagan-Bush years, alleging in May 1992 that America had "continued to lose ground in overall productivity growth." Candidate Clinton told manufacturers the U.S. had fallen behind in "infrastructure investment, in…communications and transportation" and on and on. President Clinton (October 20, 1993) saw things differently: "In the last 12 or 13 years, we have seen productivity in the United States go up at 4 percent or more a year.… We've had two European companies put plants in North America. They could have gone to Mexico. Where did they go? They went to South Carolina. One is now going to Alabama. Why? Because it's cheaper. Because labor is highly productive, even though it's more expensive."

Candidate Clinton backed budget cuts for Congress itself, but President-elect Clinton backed off. Candidate Clinton promised to 'hit the ground running" with a vigorous first 100 days, while President Clinton's first 100 days were stunning for ineptitude and lethargy.

Bill Clinton is the man who, in a speech to black pastors in November 1993, spoke eloquently of America's "great crisis of the spirit." Indeed.

By the end of 1993, President Clinton figured out how to move legislation through Congress. On the North American Free Trade Agreement, he bought the votes needed for victory with the most breath-taking use of pork-barrel since Lyndon Johnson.

As distressing as is his economic agenda, it is in the cultural and legal arenas that Clinton crosses the line into radicalism.

The president targeted the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. He promoted legislation which will make even peaceful pro-life demonstrators criminals under federal law.

We can expect worse. Clinton entered office opposing any restrictions on abortion (as a state politician, he backed moderate curbs). He endorsed the lethal logic of Roe v. Wade, pushed taxpayer abortion funding and announced a judicial litmus test. He backed laws which would assure the destruction of even more unborn children.

Landmark Legal Foundation, a public interest law center based in Kansas City, Missouri, concluded in spring 1993: "Not in decades has politics driven the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as it has in the Clinton Administration's first 100 days.… (Attorney General) Janet Reno's first act,… firing of all U.S. Attorneys, signaled the administration's primary objective to clear the ranks of previous administrations regardless of the consequences for the American people."

Landmark president Jerald L. Hill proved prophetic. As this presidency advanced, Attorney General Reno and President Clinton concentrated on defending homosexuals in the military (and then invited challenges to the "don't ask, don't tell" compromise) and Hillary Rodham Clinton's closed door health care meetings, rather than on traditional law enforcement efforts. Clinton's anti-crime agenda consisted of spending a lot of money on programs of dubious merit while taking guns away from the law-abiding.

Landmark's "100 Days of Disappointment" warned of the Department's "overly political nature" as the agency went "out of control." The group understated its case, given Clinton-Reno briefs through late 1992, on everything from homosexuality to child pornography (where Clinton eventually reversed Reno after public and congressional outcry).

One astonishing choice for a top DOJ post was University of Pennsylvania law professor Lani Guinier. A bit of historical revisionism has followed Guinier's weeks in the Washington meat-grinder, so a review of the facts is in order.

The president's nominee to run the Civil Rights Division was, as Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice observed, "breathtakingly radical." In law review articles, she attached American governance, dismissing democratic rule as "permanent majority hegemony." She supported "proportionate interest representation for self-identified communities of interest." Her rejection of coalitions repudiated civil rights tradition.

Guinier's complicated vision was summarized by columnist John Leo as granting "a minority veto over some majority decisions, and she talks of using the Voting Rights Act to ensure equal prospects of political satisfaction. Disadvantaged minorities should have 'a voice that dependably produces policy satisfaction through the political process.'" Who defines "political" or "policy" satisfaction? Guinier: "Fringe groups with illegitimate preferences would be represented, but if their preferences prevailed, the resulting legislation would be vulnerable under existing constitutional analysis."

Her nomination was eventually withdrawn by a president who said he never read her writings, yet Clinton and Reno brought to the highest echelons of government dozens of lawyers just as far outside the mainstream of traditional culture and law.

Clinton, Reno and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, were stunned at opposition to former Duke University law professor Walter Dellinnger III, who on October 13 gained 65-34 Senate confirmation to another high post at DOJ. Concerns about Dellinger's temperament, however, continued. Dellinger wrote some of Biden's floor speeches during the debate over Robert Bork's 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court. Jesse Helms and other Republicans criticized the liberal law professor's relentless political activism. Dellinger refused to offer specifics about his role in the anti-Bork coalition, leading conservatives to support a Helms filibuster. Helms finally gave up, but not before making it clear that he and some colleagues would apply to liberals the same rules applied to conservative nominees 1981-92. That determination came not a moment too soon.

Another nominee will reach the Senate about the time this book is released in early 1994. The record of Rosemary Barkett of Florida's Supreme Court conflicts with the "tough on crime" image Clinton and Reno tried to fashion for themselves. Barkett categorized one murder as "not simply a homicide case" but "also a social awareness case. Wrongly, but rightly in the eyes of (the murderer), this killing was effectuated to focus attention on a chronic and pervasive illness of racial discrimination and of hurt, sorrow and rejection." Barkett was Clinton's choice for the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Florida, Georgia and Alabama.

In November 1993, as he and Reno presented themselves as determined foes of crime, Clinton's choice for the Sixth U.S. Court of Appeals neared Senate approval. As Marianne Lombardi of the conservative Free Congress Foundation said, Martha Craig Daughtrey, then an associate justice for Tennessee, has a record "in stark contrast to Clinton's rhetoric.… Clinton may talk right but he governs left.… (T)he nominees he is choosing for lifetime appointments to the federal bench say much more about him than his scripted soundbites."

As for lifetime appointments, there was no solace in Clinton's first Supreme Court justice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a nice person with an agenda. On the High Court, she will continue the erosion of democratic governance, replacing it with judicial oligarchy. That she will do this with "sensitivity" provides little comfort to those who hoped Clinton might find a person to follow the example of Byron White, the generally principled jurist she replaced. Ginsburg is a White-style moderate in some areas of economics. But, as conservative Tim Jipping put it, "In key categories of cases e.g., cases involving the separation of powers, abortion, standing or discrimination, her politics drives her jurisprudence."

Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ginsburg refused to answer questions about explicit constitutional provisions, including the Second Amendment's protection of the right to keep and bear arms, and the death penalty. And yet she embraced philosophies found nowhere in the Constitution or its amendments. She was comfortable with the precedent in Roe v. Wade. She sympathized with "gay rights," leaving informed readers to conclude she will embrace assertions of a constitutional right to homosexual activity.

On contentious social issues, Ginsburg comes down politely on the side of Harvard University Professor Larry Tribe's view of law: In modern America, the liberal agenda is constitutionally required, whereas the conservative agenda is constitutionally forbidden. It is easy to oppose Larry Tribe. It is harder to oppose a person of Ginsburg's charm, personality and obvious ability. Yet, her philosophy will take her further and further into the realm of anti-democratic activism. A nice lady, yes, but as Jipping observed, "If Judge Ginsburg is in the mainstream, she is at its left bank."

A key player in Clinton's Department of Justice drama is Webster Hubbell, a former law partner of Hillary who took over as associate attorney general. Hubbell was a long-time member of the Country Club of Little Rock, which Governor Clinton used to frequent. In March 1992, civil rights leaders denounced Clinton for "betrayal" after he golfed at the club, which had no black members. Clinton apologized, and said he would not return to the club until it was integrated. Hubbell remained a member, and that became an issue during his confirmation proceedings. As Coalitions for America, the conservative lobbying organization, asserted: "(T)he perversion of the confirmation process brought about by Democrats since 1987 will never be addressed until they are forced to live by the rules they created." Hubbell's membership was the focus of stories in The New York Times, Washington Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Washington Post. He withdrew from the club and gained confirmation.

But the tale does not end there. The powerful Rose law firm of Little Rick, of which he and the president's wife are alumni, had represented Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan owned by close allies from Clinton's Arkansas years. Hubbell sued auditors on behalf of the S&L. Vince Foster, the White House aide who killed himself in summer 1993, had also represented a leading figure in the Madison S&L scandal. One person implicated in the scandal fingered both the president and his successor as governor, Jim Guy Tucker, for pressuring the S&L into suspect loans. In early winter 1993, Hubbell and the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock rescued themselves from a Department of Justice investigation as it drew closer to Clinton. Attorney General Janet Reno ignored calls for appointment of an independent counsel, even as controversy touched the president, his wife, and much of the top leadership at the department. Welcome to Bill Clinton's America.

Lack of prior foreign policy experience is not necessarily debilitating to a presidency. Building on the legacy of his predecessors, Bill Clinton enjoyed some successes forging a good relationship with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and supporting the tenuous peace framework for Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Some who are adept—Ronald Reagan is one example—had no formal foreign policy experience before their presidencies. However, successful presidents have shared a belief that American policy should secure American interests. A rational framework guided their decisions on use of force and diplomacy.

Clinton has few core principles and no apparent framework—other than, perhaps, a predilection to trust internationalists more than American military leaders. As a result, he lurches from one crisis to the next. His on-the-job training is exacting a high price in U.S. prestige and influence. When commentators noted U.S. foreign policy "drift" in late 1993, a better word might have been "aimlessness." Bill Clinton never brought moral persuasion, let alone rational deployment of force, effectively to bear on the most horrifying world spectacle of 1993—the final devastation of what used to be called Yugoslavia.

Yet even in areas where American strength might have effectively been used to advance American interests, Clinton proved inept. After hundreds of thousands of Haitian refugees, given a green light, fled to America in dangerous boats, he reversed course and embraced policies he had denounced throughout 1992. As events in Haiti reeled out of control, military leaders (whom State Department aide Lawrence E. Pezzullo had dubbed "chicken littles") proved as prophetic about "nation building" in that Caribbean island nation as in Somalia. Clinton ignored military advisors, sending a lightly-armed contingent of U.S. "civic assistance" troops. When their ship tried to dock in Port-au-Prince, angry demonstrators prevented unloading. The Washington Post commented in an editorial (October 14, 1993): "The abrupt collapse of U.S. plans to land soldiers in Haiti has dealt a new blow to President Clinton's attempts to demonstrate that he has a coherent foreign policy capable of leading the world community toward a post-Cold War era of diplomacy and stability."

Clinton's handling of military involvement in Somalia is the best-known example of his international failures. Whether for cynical or other reasons, Clinton in late 1992 endorsed his predecessor's "clearly-defined humanitarian mission.… The mandate our armed forces and our partners in the coalition will fulfill is to create a secure environment to save lives and I commended President Bush for his leadership on this important humanitarian effort." That mission was accomplished by summer 1993. But Clinton switched to an ill-defined course of nation-building. U.S. commanders grew perplexed about "mission creep", an expansion of responsibilities without increased resources. Former President Bush graciously declined to second guess our confusion on the world stage. Only once did Bush confess he worried "about the mission having been redefined. Our mission was to go into Somalia, open the supply lines (and) then to withdraw and have the United Nations handle the peacekeeping function."

Aimlessness can yield disaster. Defense Secretary Les Aspin, in a fateful decision in early fall, denied a military request for vehicles with reinforced hulls. That proved literally fatal when an American Ranger unit suffered 70 percent casualties in Mogadishu. The losses were the highest unit casualty rate since the 1965 Ia Drang Valley battle in Vietnam.

At the core of Clinton's Somalian failure was his apparent belief that the U.S. military should become an arm of U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's international vision. Former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, on former President Bush's behalf, had consistently "resisted… pleas from the United Nations and others to broaden the mission." But things had changed by fall 1993. In an exchange with Secretary of State Warred Christopher, Boutros-Ghali spoke of his determination "to bring… to justice" a Somali warlord. Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, echoing other Democrats, regarded Clinton's expansion of the mission as "far beyond that… originally carved out and understood." Boutros-Ghali's determination, well removed from American interests, led to the death of 17 American soldiers and the wounding of 77 others. In character, Clinton blamed others. The Washington Post quoted the president on the transformation of the U.S. military's role in Somalia: "Why didn't I know this was happening?" By year's end, plans were being made for withdrawal from the region.

The world's superpower allowed a U.N. lightweight and a Somali warlord to determine American policy at the Horn of Africa. Amos Perlmutter, writing in The Washington Post (October 18, 1993), captured the spectacle: "President Clinton's record in foreign policy is abysmal and shows no sign of improving. It can be characterized by reluctance, reaction by passivity and false bluster and failure to formulate and articulate a foreign policy."

Clinton ended his first year adrift in foreign affairs, reeling from one misjudgment to another—mistakes leading not to the groves of Oxford philosophers, but to the graves of American soldiers. George Bush knew foreign policy, Bill Clinton does not, and it shows. Regardless of the former president's faults, George Bush's strengths on the world stage make all the more glaring the disastrous failures of his successor.

Political handlers masterfully packaged Bill Clinton as the man from Hope, a place where small town values still prevail. Desperate for change after the lethargy of the Bush years, Americans never grasped the truth about Bill Clinton's life: That his formative years were not spent in the nice little town of Hope, but in Hot Springs, the most "wide open" town in the state, and perhaps in the region.

David Broder of The Washington Post once charitably mused on Clinton's "trust deficit." This president's politics, character, and consistent distortions—whether the issue is personal shortcomings or public policy—none of this is surprising when the entire story is known. Little wonder that the most persistent, vigorous Clinton critic is the editorial page editor in Little Rock, Paul Greenberg.

Broder's colleague at the Post, Robert Samuelson, has expressed with some apparent regret and dismay the insight that Bill Clinton is the biggest liar ever to serve in the presidency. As more and more Americans reach the same conclusion, the Clinton presidency will unravel due not only to its misguided world view, but also to the character flaws of its principal players.