BACK WHEN THE LYING BEGAN

Clinton himself is only glimpsed in The War Room; he’s a voice on the telephone, a flashing image on a TV monitor. And when we do see him he is doing what he does best: smiling, shaking his head in puzzlement or disgust, and — ceaselessly, endlessly — denying everything. A scrum of reporters surrounds him in New Hampshire to ask about Gennifer Flowers. “The charges are false,” he says, with the studied ambiguity we now know so well. “It’s sad that this could be published in a paper like the Star, which reports Martians walk on the earth. I mean, you never ask me whether Martians walk on the earth, do you?”

But the Clinton style embraces more than the man himself; it emanates from him, and radiates outward to encompass all those who assist him in his ambitions. Our first extended look at Carville comes as he gives a pep talk to New Hampshire volunteers, who appear briefly disconcerted by reports of Clinton’s skirt-chasing and draft-dodging. “Listen,” Carville tells the troops, “it’s gonna come out that Roger Ailes is behind this stuff. Ailes, and of course Bush and Georgette Mosbacher.” Georgette Mosbacher? Carville hadn’t yet heard about Richard Mellon Scaife, apparently. “Any time anybody comes up here with fresh ideas, they take ’em out. Remember Muskie?” That would be old Ed “Fresh Ideas” Muskie. Tell it, James! “And if we win this, then you have knocked this s– back fo-evah!”

Then Clinton’s famous “political viability” letter about the draft makes its way into the press. The campaign might have tried to explain the letter. Instead it attacks. “Here’s the question,” Carville hollers at reporters. ” What is the Pentagon doin’ leakin’ somethin’ like this?” Gov. Clinton hollers, too. “I want you to ask the president to call the Pentagon and find out who leaked this!” he tells reporters. A good question, perhaps, except that Bill Clinton would never ask it today, now that Pentagon leaks involve Linda Tripp’s top-secret security clearance. Some questions lose their relevance.

The War Room is full of such eerie echoes, for the ClintonJan approach to the press and the public has remained essentially unchanged. The Clintonites didn’t invent the combination of cajolery, dissembling, and equivocation that we today know as “spin.” But they practiced the art with an inexhaustible energy — so inexhaustible that it races along at high voltage even now. The lengthiest episode in the movie concerns Carville and Stephanopoulos’s effort to plant an anti-Bush story with CBS News. CBS enthusiastically tries to verify the tip. A producer keeps the Clinton campaign informed of the Bush team’s reaction and even offers to fax over a copy of the script for the broadcast. But then — tragedy. The story turns out not to be true. For some reason, CBS decides not to use it. Carville is crestfallen. He consoles himself by screaming over the phone at a reporter from the Washington Post, which had dared to run another Clinton-draft story on the front page.

Jerry Brown confronts Clinton during a debate — some wild allegation about a failed Arkansas land deal. “You oughta be ashamed jumpin’ on my wife,” Clinton snarls in mock offense, to which Brown replies: “You’re always trying to attack, Governor. You never answer the question.” And so it goes. George Stephanopoulos appears on This Week with David Brinkley to answer questions about the governor’s womanizing. “The American people care about jobs and education,” he scolds Sam Donaldson. “They’re not going to be diverted by side issues.” As his eyes dart around, George’s exasperation is palpable: It’s like you-all think Clinton’s going to get elected and start nailing the interns or something!

The conventional view after 1992 was that the Clintonires had finally beaten the GOP at its own game — that George and James and the rest were simply better at the cynical techniques of political manipulation invented by Republicans. There’s some truth to this, though not much. In 1992, Clinton and his boys ran against a feeble incumbent and an extraterrestrial munchkin who chose “Crazy” as his campaign song, and they still managed to win only 43 percent of the vote. The Clintonites weren’t “the best.” They were just the most shameless. And lack of scruple can often take you further than mere ingenuity.

The real innovation came after the election, when the methods of Clinton- style campaigning were uprooted and transplanted, in their entirety, to the executive branch. This is why in 1998 we have a White House that is less an instrument of government than the headquarters for an endless campaign — just another war room, whose only object is to vanquish enemies, whoever they are, and to defend the leader, regardless of cost.

One War Room scene more than any other carries dim, premonitory rumbles of trouble in the distance. Close to the movie’s end, Stephanopoulos takes a phone call from a Perot operative who threatens to go public with a now forgotten allegation about Clinton’s private life. Pacing in his jean jacket behind his desk, Stephanopoulos beats the story back. “You would be laughed at and people would think you’re crazy,” he tells the caller. “We are not going to lose. We are going to win. He is going to be president. But think of yourself,” he continues, his voice all the more ominous for its tonelessness. “I guarantee you, if you do this, you’ll never work in Democratic politics again. You’ll be embarrassed in front of the national press corps. Nobody will believe you. And people will think you’re scummy.”

Scummy? Did someone say scummy?

It’s all here, in other words, preserved forever in a well-wrought and ultimately depressing movie: the blame-shifting, the bullying, the smears, and the attacks, no matter how preposterous, in the face of any threat to the president’s political viability. The War Room makes it plain: We were warned.

Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.