Last month I had the curious experience, which must be much more familiar to the eminences of the journalistic “profession” than it is to me, of becoming part of a story I had attempted to write. In my case, the story was a humble book review. I had been asked by The Washington Post to review two books on the Clinton scandals—Jeffrey Toobin’s A Vast Conspiracy and The Hunting of the President by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, mentioned in this space last month. I don’t know why the Post asked me. Perhaps it was because I had once written a piece for the TLS in which I had criticized the shortsightedness both of Clinton’s admirers and of his detractors. In my review I made a similar point, noting that, although both books had important things to say, both were flawed by excessive partisanship and a willingness to be as credulous towards the Clintons as those they criticized were towards the Clintons& ...

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